Why Positive Thinking is Bad for You (2)
but it's kind of interesting how there is
this effect of thinking slightly pessimistically
about the future rather than optimistically about it,
and how that actually potentially
translates to a real world health outcome.
And so, negative visualisation is great.
I do this all the time,
where I think, like, whenever I'm making decisions,
I think, "Okay,
what is the absolute worst case scenario here?
What are the things that could go wrong?"
And a, usually I find out that those things
aren't actually so bad,
like, if I got rejected,
or if a thing,
a YouTube video doesn't work out,
or if someone leaves a negative comment,
these things really aren't that bad.
But also, it means that once I visualise
the negative outcome,
I can then take steps to try and mitigate the risks
of that happening.
And there's this nice quote from the Stoics that says that
we often suffer more in imagination than in reality.
And so, premeditating adversity, defensive pessimism,
negative visualisation,
all of this is stuff that helps us recognise the suffering
that we do in our imagination.
And hopefully, it wouldn't translate into reality.
Now, as you guys know,
if you've been watching the channel for a while,
I'm a huge fan of stoicism.
It is the school of philosophy that I'm most follow.
And it's what I generally attribute to my baseline,
very high levels of happiness and tranquillity.
And the fact that people say that I'm generally unflappable.
I mostly put it down to the fact that
I've just been drinking the stoicism Kool-Aid
for like 10 years now.
And if you're interested in learning more about stoicism,
you might like to check out my Skillshare class
on how stoicism has made me happier.
That's a class that I've done jointly with my friend, Sam,
who is a researcher and teacher in philosophy.
And he does a lot of research into stoicism.
And we talk about the real world effects
that stoic philosophy has had on our lives,
and how it's made us happier.
If you wanna check that out,
you can sign up to a free trial of Skillshare
who are very kindly sponsoring this video.
There'll be links in the video description.
And if you're one of the first 1000 people to hit the link
in the video description,
then you'll get a one month free trial to Skillshare.
And during that month, you can watch my class on stoicism.
You can also watch the other eight classes
that I've got on Skillshare.
Three of them are themed around productivity.
Two of them are aimed specifically at students
about how to study for exams most effectively.
We've got the stoicism one,
we've even got the class
so I plan teacher you
where we're teaching the basics of jazz piano.
So that's kind of interesting.
But in particular, you to check out the stoicism ones,
and the productivity ones,
and the studying themed ones, if you're a student.
So if you're one of the first 1000 people
to hit that link in the video description,
you can sign up for a free trial of Skillshare.
And on Skillshare, there are thousands of other classes
about a tonne of other topics as well,
but definitely check out my ones first.
So thank you Skillshare for sponsoring this video.
And if you wanna learn more about the stoicism stuff,
click this video over here,
which is "10 Quotes from Stoicism."
Again, a video that me and my friend, Sam, did together,
10 quotes from stoicism and how they helped our lives.
do hit the subscribe button if you aren't already,
and I'll see you in the next video,
bye-bye.
