What is – Premeditatio malorum ? A definition of sorts to start
Premeditatio malorum : “The exercise of imagining things that could go wrong or be taken away from us. It helps us prepare for life’s inevitable setbacks. We don’t always get what is rightfully ours, even if we’ve earned it. Not everything is as clean and straightforward as we think they may be. Psychologically, we must prepare ourselves for this to happen.”
Ryan Holiday
Here is a link to some more thoughts on the subject from Ryan Holiday’s perspective – link to Ryan Holliday’s thoughts at his Daily Stoic blog
Life. It is hard. It is messy. It is beautiful. It is life!
It doesn’t mean it won’t happen or it will happen! Life isn’t really fair, so what? So, if it does happen, it does. If it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t! The practice of Premeditatio malorum helps me in adapting and responding. Does it make it easier to accept the difficulties or evils or hardships that I may encounter? Not at all! What it does do is help me shape my disposition and responses to difficult things. Life is full of many interactions which I have no control! So, I seek and strive to focus on what I can control. My response to the stimulus!
A huge observation and challenge I often see is over-thought! It is my observation that over intellectualizing and not including action can be truly difficult, too. So while I may anticipate to have a generally good day, I try to be ready in case it isn’t and try to maintain a cheerful disposition either way.
Another way to spell perfection is ‘paralysis’!
Winston Churchill
Pathological Demand Avoidance and its effects
Something interesting to include here is the example of Pathological Demand Avoidance. Two of my kiddos don’t necessarily have the option to respond with agency like I do between a stimulus and response. Instead they barrell right into fight or flight responses! While current resources tend to focus on behavioral approaches, those applications and methods fail when PDA (a biological and neuro disruptive condition) is indeed present. The disruption is often neurological at its root. It is commonly accompanied by anxiety and other fight or flight responses (Fight, Flight, Freeze, Freeze, Fawn, Funster -as emerging examples) skip the pathways that enable generally logical and/or reasonable humans to navigate the space of stimulus and response. It is a journey rife with aspirations, lessons learned, failures and successes. From the outside looking in, I observe many who don’t understand my family’s challenges/opportunities and superpowers and super failures. So we tarry on fatigued, exasperated at times, and hopeful for opportunities to continually improve and grow.
Looking for information about PDA (Pathological Demand Avoidance)
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Life. It is hard. It is messy. It is beautiful. It is life!
Marcus Aurelius approaches I employ:
- Practice The Virtues You Can Show
- Courage
- Temperance
- Wisdom
- Justice
- Draw Strength from Others
- Focus on The Present
The Four Agreements approaches I employ:
Faith based tenets approaches I employ
- The Golden Rule
- Be curious not judgmental
- Practice faith becoming action
- Don’t fall into the trap of spelling perfection with the word paralysis (inaction)
“Not to feel exasperated, or defeated, or despondent because your days aren’t packed with wise and moral actions. But to get back up when you fail, to celebrate behaving like a human–however imperfectly–and fully embrace the pursuit that you’ve embarked on.”
— Marcus Aurelius
A glimpse at some of my coping skills
Work Related
Triathlon/life related
Triathlon has become a large part of my life. As I write this, I am flooded with the memory of being on a Delta flight. I sat down to return home from Paris to SLC. As I sit down and buckle in, I observe a problem for me. I am 3 inches away from asking for an extender belt. In shock I tried to negotiate the feelings and realities associated with this realization. I’m not obese! Am I? I don’t know what is happening?
So started my journey of regaining control – see this post for the context and background. The absolute frustrating thing is that in 2020 as Covid hit it disrupted my physical changes too. It’s my fault, but the stress I was bearing and a few other changes, child number four being born during covid restrictions – luckily I was able to be in the birthing and recovery – following welcomed disciplined and structured protocols. That being said, I was back on track and heading in a good direction and completed IM California in October of 2022. Then, well, I took my wife on a bowling date, and I tore my lower hip adductor.
Post to some more of my library of coping skills
I share this post as it pairs with my thoughts here today:
https://happyinthehills.com/zentriathlete/mindset-ego-and-injury-the-journey-is-real/
“Pessimism is an indulgence, despair an insult to the imagination. There are wonderfully positive things out there.”
— Wade Davis
Loud disruptive noises everywhere
Mindset
So back to iterative growth and mindset. One of the many lessons learned through perseverance in triathlon training and event finishes is that by small and little things do the seemingly epic things occur. I’ve been hiding behind this injury since January and its time to recalibrate. It’s time to build small habits, and hopefully I can get back to at least 70.3 events by May. But looking at the new Ironman Flex90 registration plan, wow. I tend to register in March before the final cut off to know I am race hardened and in path to be able to participate and race. The initial registration fee is higher than I have ever seen following the airline price model prior to an event. CRAZY! Maybe Andy Messick really was given the we wish for you to retire option only. I get that IM is a brand first and corporation, but the Age groupers carry their product and they may have just out marketed the ‘Anything is possible’ messaging.
Filtering the noise
I find the messiest thing today is being disciplined enough to filter through the noise. Much of the noise is catered to grab attention. It then becomes disruptive. That is by design, and that is its purpose. I find that iterative growth and mindset was burned into my dna from environmental things. The parenting I received included a faith-based structure. I learned about prayer. This helped me learn about personal meditation, focused recovery and restful states early in life. I find these practices to be interchangeable and often complimentary. Sometimes I am working on me, sometimes I am communicating to universal Deity or constructs and other times it is pure meditative catharsis! I also received a lot of assumptive programming along the way, which required me to dig in myself to identify and seek for truths and wade through assumptions or projected half-truths.
Some examples include:
- Job
- I learned about the miraculous composite story of Job early. Although canonized by non-secular Christians
- I have often wondered what my judaic friends across the aisle think.
- A most intriguing opinion cited in the Midrash is that Job did not actually suffer the tragedies attributed to him but did live at some point. The Torah intends to communicate the sheer fortitude of Job’s faith in that even if he were to suffer the overwhelming misfortune described throughout the book, his faith would have sustained him throughout. (Bereishit Rabbah 57:4.)
- Sodom and Gomorrah
- Link to info
- This was a fun read, the comments especially from Michal and the Primrose fellow were quite interesting. TLDR – it had little to do with sexuality execution preferences and mostly about elitism and idealism – the stories in and around how they deflected charity was mind-blowing as I observe similar notions active in Christian Orthodoxy today
I could cite more examples but I wanted to use illustrative examples that made me stop and hit the pause button. Hard stop! Dig in a bit. Discover, recalibrate, reconfirm, deconstruct where necessary and only carry forward what was necessary. I love this quote below and I think it applies to many vectors of life – core values, parenting, triathlon, mindset, being a decent human:
“If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties.”
~~Sir Francis Bacon
Realizations – lessons learned
Every day I age, I realize more and more how little I know. It’s an interesting conundrum post adolescence where I knew everything! That being said, in triathlon I was able to reconcile many of the difficulties i bore for years. They aren’t things that would stop me or whatever, but it helped me let go of being a douchebag. It helped me return to being mindful and open and available enough to be present.
Let’s end with this and i think it applies to more than kids, but it’s a great reminder and an awesome practice concentrating on re-calibrating in the moment. A snapback as it were.
Final thoughts – Premeditatio malorum
This practice is not about pessimism. No! It’s about being ready to bare the the burden no one wishes to bare. If it does arrive, which I can tell you from experience – it allows you muscle memory- Not necessarily with perfection. Rather it allows me to know that I can do hard things. Even Atlas had to take a knee. While life is heavy and thick, self-reliance is a pro/con. Asking for help in this moment is often unbearable not to mention I’m trying my best to be strong – I don’t have room for vulnerable in this or these moments! I imagine more than just me in this space more often waiting for someone to notice the voids of – I don’t have space, time, energy, fortitude or any other attribute of the like! The presentation below is overwhelming, watch with care. Best!
