The pre-mortem

Most of us do the opposite. We picture the launch landing perfectly, the shift running smooth, the customer saying yes. Then the supplier cancels, the line goes down, the inspection fails, and we're flattened — not by the trouble itself, but by how completely it caught us off guard.

The Stoics had a deliberate practice for this, and it sounds grim until you try it. Epictetus, who taught for years after a life of slavery, told his students: "Let Death and Exile, and all other Things which appear terrible, be daily before your Eyes; but chiefly Death: and you will never entertain any abject Thought" (Enchiridion 21, Carter). Keep the worst in view, and it loses its power to ambush you.

This is the week's move: the pre-mortem. Before the big day, you sit with what could go wrong, calmly, in advance — the no, the breakdown, the loss. Not to marinate in dread. To meet trouble once now, in your head, so it can't arrive as a shock later. The driver who's already pictured the blown tire doesn't panic on the shoulder. The nurse who's rehearsed the code doesn't freeze.

You're not inviting the worst. You're refusing to be surprised by it.