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A Thought Exercise for Building Mental Resilience
When things are going well, meditate on all that can go wrong
So things in your life are going well. You’re in a good place in your career. You’re healthy, and so are your loved ones. Your relationships are strong.
Great. Now meditate on what can go wrong.
This may sound like a terrible idea. “Why worry unnecessarily?” you might ask. You’d rather deal with setbacks as they come. But doing a “loss meditation” serves an important purpose: It can help you become more resilient when setbacks hit, and feel more grateful for what you have now.
To give it a try, follow these steps:
- Find a comfortable place to sit or lie down.
- Close your eyes.
- Think about a person who is close to you and whom you rely on for support. Imagine having a good time with them. Feel the joy you experience from being with that person.
- Now, imagine that you’re alone in a room. Imagine you receive a call. You pick up the phone. The person you love just died.
- Feel the shock and sadness in your stomach.
Now, snap out of it. It’s not necessary to get stuck in that feeling. The point is to temporarily feel negative emotions, so that when you open your eyes, your appreciation for what you’ve been given is stronger.
It’s also a reminder that what you just felt is inevitable — and that someday, you’ll feel it for more than a fleeting moment. No matter how prepared you are, things can and will go wrong. These obstacles never come at a good time. Whenever something bad used to happen to me, I’d think, “why now?” — as if I had any control over external factors. This was a delusional way of thinking. We are entitled to nothing.
Repeat this exercise for whatever you fear: a layoff, the end of a relationship, or bad news from the doctor. I regularly meditate on disasters like losing all my money. I’ll imagine that I make a wrong investment and everything is gone. I do this so often in my mind that if it really happens, it’s not new to me. I will be ready to start over.
I also meditate on getting ill or injured. What would I do if I couldn’t work? If I couldn’t walk?
It’s best to do this meditation when life is relatively calm. When you’re in the middle of a personal crisis, you don’t have the time or energy to strengthen your mind and body. You need all your resources to make the best of what’s in front of you.
This exercise might sound depressing, but it shouldn’t be. To improve your life over the long term, you first need to see how good it already is right now.
