A few hard days on purpose

The fear under most money worries isn't really about money. It's about how low you'd have to go, and whether you could stand it. You picture the lost shift, the slow month, the layoff, and the picture is vague and enormous, so it scares you more than it should.

Seneca had a fix that sounds strange until you try it. Set aside a few days, he said, and live as if the bad thing had already happened — the plainest food, the roughest clothes, the smallest spending — then ask yourself honestly: is this the thing I was so afraid of? (Letters 18, idea). You meet the hardship while you're the one choosing it. You find the floor is lower and more solid than you feared.

You can scale this to a workday. Skip the bought lunch and bring the cheap one. Take the bus you'd normally drive past. Work a stretch without the small comforts you lean on — the coffee, the snack, the music. Not to punish yourself. To learn, in your own body, that you'd be fine. The shift you're dreading loses its grip once you've stood in a smaller version of it and walked out unharmed.