Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Yes, yes, I am Dramas and this is the Street
Stoic Podcast, bringing your daily dose of timeless stoke philosophy
remix for the.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Hip hop generation.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
We are combining ancient philosophy with lyrics or quotes from
some of the greatest to ever grace a microphone. Now,
with that in mind, let's get things started with your
daily shot of inspiration. Now today we're refocusing all around
the Stoic practice that is entitled premeditationo malorum, right, which
(00:48):
translates to pre meditation of evils or even in more
layman's terms, the idea of looking ahead. And this was
inspired by a blog on the Daily Stoic dot com.
But first of almost let's start with the lyric that
kind of came to my mind as I was reading
through that article and inspired by this conversation of just
(01:09):
looking ahead and kind of almost planning for the worst
so that you're ready for whatever gets thrown your way, right,
and a lyric that kind of came to my mind.
When we think about this.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Idea of visualization, right, because there's.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Good visualization that you know, you sort of anticipating what
you want to happen, there's also you visualizing it going
awry and planning for that. But I think in general,
we're all visualizing all the time, whether we realize it
or not. Right, And in this record, meet mail, dreams
and nightmares, which we've all heard before. At this point
in a club is usually like the high point of
the night. This this line right here, I think kind
(01:44):
of I want to talk about it as a practical
sense of visualization that I'm sure all of us have
done at some point. Right, he says, I used to
pray for times like this, to rhyme like this, and
I promise I'm going somewhere with this connecting to this
idea of of looking ahead.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
But I think a lot of times.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
We get caught up in sort of the wackiness of
like when people talk about the law of attraction and
just visualize it and it's going to come, and that
brand new Bentley is going to show up your driveway
for no reason whatsoever. You just have to think about
it really hard. And this idea of visualization, it's preparing
you for your future.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Like it just.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Sounds crazy when you talk about it in practical terms, right,
But people have been praying for a long time, right,
People have normalized the idea of praying. I'm sure many
of us have prayed at some point in time, ask God,
asked the universe whatever it is, for something, right.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
And that was normal.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
And prayer is just another form of visualization, right. And
that's what makes prayer so powerful, because it's you getting
very specific on what you want.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
It's you picturing what you want.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
You want to picture that situation, right, And that's what
Meek is talking about here. And obviously in this case,
he is visualizing the positive that he wanted to happen, right,
the positive outcome to happen. But we also forget that
it's important to think about all that could go wrong
on the flip side of visualization. And that's sort of
what we're getting in too, with the grandiose idea of
(03:06):
today's show. And that leads to a quote from one
of the stoics, Senego, where he says, rehearse them in
your mind.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Exile, torture, war, shipwreck, all the.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Terms of our human lot should be before your eyes.
I love this because this is a practice that I
recently developed, but I think, without sort of knowing it,
this is just as important of a tool as the
positive sort of visualization is right. And again, we've heard
(03:38):
a lot of the manifestation stuff and that's sort of
always what gets focused on. But what's also important is
being able to react in the best way possible when
things don't go according to plan.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Right.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
This is what the blog post I'm referencing from Daily
Stoe was talking about, and this is Ryan Holliday's website,
and it talks about how before Ryan Holliday gets on
stage for a big speech, he runs through everything that
could go wrong, any trouble with the microphone, the clicker
not advancing, the slide, the audience not reacting as anticipated.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
He is able to see.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
Potential problems before they arise and come up with solutions
before anything actually happens, and leading into kind of how
I've applied this to my life.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
I went away.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
I've talked about this before, I think on the show,
but I went away to like a personal growth retreat
called the Hoffmann Process, And one of the tools they
teach you is called pre cycling, where you visualize like
a big moment. Right, So if I'm going to be
in a big meeting, I'm going to be doing a talk,
I have a big event, I'm djaying a really big gig,
whatever it might be. And what I do is I
visualize the worst case scenario. All my fears that I
(04:42):
have that are making me really nervous, I visualize them,
take a deep breath in and exhale all of those
negative emotions, and then I visualize all the positive things.
What would happen if the event went as well as
humanly possible. I visualize that and allow those feelings to
come over me.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Right, It's this.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
Idea of getting yourself to a relaxed place so that
when things do not go according to plan, because there's
always going to be something nothing goes exactly according to plan,
you don't freak out in that moment. You can calmly
address it. You can commonly take care of it and
not allow it to completely derail you. Now we've been
obviously talking about this practice of in Layman's terms, looking ahead,
(05:20):
so meek Mill visualizing the positive, Seneca talking about the
visualization of all that could go wrong, and even me
kind of this idea of pre cycling being such a
big part of my life. Now, let's talk about how
you can make it your.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
Mantra for today. But first it's take a quick break
and then we'll be right back, all right.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
So day we're talking all about the stoke practice of
premeditatio malorum, or the premeditation of evils. Really, we're just
talking about visualization and how important it is to not
only visualize the positive things that you want to happen,
but also being able to be aware of all that
could go wrong so you can be best prepared to
(06:09):
embrace it and move past it when it inevidly happens.
And we've heard Male visualizing the good that he wants
in his life, for his career, for being an artist.
We've heard Seneca visualizing literally the worst case scenario of
things that could happen for him. I've talked about how
I use both of these visualizations before every big event
or gig that I have. Now let's talk about how
you can make it your mantra for today, and literally
(06:32):
it's applying the same thing that I've applied to my life,
this idea of pre cycling. And it doesn't just have
to be like you're about to go and give a
public speech or you're about to go in a big meeting.
I use this practice all the time, even if I'm
going into like a big family party, and there's people
there that I know I have different opinions from, and
(06:53):
I don't want to get into an argument with them.
I will precycle on my way to that family party,
where I will think of the worst case scenario of
this cousin pissing me off at something they said and
me having to clap back at them, and then I'll
think about the positive one where they say something I
don't react to it. We all move forward happily, you know,
enjoying ourselves at this family party.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
Right.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
This is something I do on a consistent basis, where
I am just mentally preparing myself for every situation so
that the sort of emotion of the event when something
goes awry doesn't overcome me. That's sort of all that
we're talking about today is just giving yourself the tools
to be in the best place to react when something
(07:37):
happens in your life. Now, to recap all that we've
been talking about, you have meek mil being somebody who's
obviously displaying the idea of visualization, right, and I wanted
to introduce this for anybody who is just not there yet.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Right.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
You're not somebody who like meditates, You're not somebody who
sits there and just like allows yourself to daydream about
all that you want and to manage and all these
different things, breaking this sort of the barrier to entry
in that for a lot of people, the world of
self help and wellness and all these things, it just
seems weird. So putting it in the more practical sort
(08:12):
of form, when you're praying, that's literally what you're doing.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
You're asking God for what you want.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
You're visualizing what it is that you want and then
asking for it. Right, and you have to have a
picture of what you want in order to be praying
to God for And that's so incredibly powerful because it
gives you a bit of direction in your life. Right
when you can actually see what you want in your mind,
it allows you to make decisions that will help you
get there.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
And on the flip side of it, right, more.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Specifically, the visualization of all that could go wrong, Right
when you have somebody like Seneca talking about preparing for exile, torture, war,
and shipwreck, mentally rehearsing that in his mind, essentially saying that, listen,
he hopes none of this happens. But life always throws
things our way. Things don't always go a course to plan,
(09:00):
and rather than having the rug pulled out from under him,
he would rather be as mentally prepared to make the
best decisions of its chaos as humanly possible. Right, And
that's all that we're doing when I talk about the
idea of pre cycling and rehearsing things in my mind,
I'm literally just trying to give myself the best chance
(09:21):
at making the most of every situation that I'm in visualization.
Just being an incredibly important tool for all of us.
And it's something that's been around for centuries at this point.
Be it in prayer, be it in the mindset of
the Stokes, whatever it might be, it's been around, and
I think it's something that we all can implement and
a tool we can kind of add to our tool
belts to help bring out the best of us even
(09:44):
when life throws some of it's worst at us. Right,
I think that's sort of the key towards growth and
wellness and all these things. It's not about being perfect,
it's about just having the tools to handle all the
nonsense that life is inevitably going to throw at us.
And with that said, thank you so much for checking
out the street Stoke Podcast.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
Do your best to apply.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
These concerts we discussed into your everyday life and I
will catch you next week. The Street Stoke Podcast is
a production of Iheart's Michael Podcast Network