words per minute
21
TngNguyn27
00:00
Speed
In his Handbook, Epictetus advocates this sort of "projective visualization"
Suppose, he says, that our servant breaks a cup. We are likely to get angry and have our tranquility disrupted by the incident.
One way to avert this anger is to think about how we would feel if the incident had happened to someone else instead.
If we were at someone's house and his servant broke a cup, we would be unlikely to get angry, indeed, we might try to calm our host by saying "It is just a cup, these things happen".
Engaging in projective visualization, Epictetus believes, will make us appreciate the relative insignificance of the bad things that happen to us and will therefore prevent them from disrupting our tranquility.