How to Think Like a Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius

by Donald J. Robertson

Emotional habituation, as described above, where anxiety or other feelings naturally wear off over time and become blunted through exposure to the feared situation. 2. Emotional acceptance, where we gradually reduce our struggle against unpleasant feelings such as pain or anxiety, come to view them with greater indifference, and learn to live with them—something that, paradoxically, often greatly alleviates emotional distress. 3. Cognitive distancing, where we increasingly view thoughts and beliefs with detachment: we begin to notice that it’s not things themselves that upset us but our judgments about them. 4. Decatastrophizing, where we gradually reappraise our judgments about the severity of a situation, of how awful it seems, downgrading it by going from “What if this happens? How will I cope?” to “So what if this happens? It’s not the end of the world.” 5. Reality testing, where we reappraise our assumptions about a situation to make them progressively more realistic and objective; for example, reevaluating the probability of the worst-case scenario or that something bad will even happen at all. 6. Problem-solving, where repeatedly reviewing an event leads us to creatively figure out a solution to some problem facing us—perhaps like Marcus and his generals’ paradoxical idea of deliberately marching their legionaries into a Sarmatian ambush in order to spring a trap on the enemy. 7. Behavioral rehearsal, where our perception of our ability to cope improves as we practi...