Jay Shetty

Rehearsing for a play and a drama that you're going to perform on stage which is actually happening is different from inventing drama that hasn't happened or might not happen.

You are paying the biological tax on a problem that may never arrive.

Seneca wrote 2,000 years ago,

We suffer more in imagination than in reality.

This was not a platitude for him.

It was a diagnostic observation.

In Zen Buddhism, this is captured in the instruction, When sitting, sit.

When walking, walk.

Above all, don't wobble.

The mind that is rehearsing tomorrow while living today is wobbling.

And a wobbling mind is an exhausted mind.

Here's how to implement this.

When you catch yourself rehearsing a future conversation or spiraling into a what-if scenario, use a technique called temporal labeling.

Say to yourself, that is a future thought.

I am in the present.

You're not suppressing the thought.

You're tagging it accurately so your brain can deprioritize it.

Practice this every morning and it will begin to generalize across your entire day within weeks.

You're not stressed about your life.

You're stressed about a version of your life that hasn't even happened yet.