Heyo!
Take a minute to really appreciate my BRAND NEW DESIGN for Splash (so like hit "Show Images" or whatever your email client may say). I made the initial design in 5 minutes when I decided to make a newsletter and I slowly grew to resent my horrific wavy SPLASH logo and colors. But now it's better. For now.
Negative Visualization
I’ve talked about Stoicism in the past as an interesting way to live, but I recently started investigating a Stoic practice known as “negative visualization.” The idea is that you consider the classic question, “what’s the worst thing that could happen?” As someone who is naturally a tightly bound ball of anxiety, I thought that this would be right up my alley. However, the concept is a little more complex than my constant fear spirals. The question is meant to lead you in a few different directions. Let’s think about a hypothetical job interview for your dream job. First, it helps you to realize that this job interview could go badly and you could continue to be unemployed. However, negative visualization is meant to dig deeper. The job interview could go well, but if you were hit by a truck immediately after, that would be much worse. Although the latter situation is much less likely (knock on wood), it puts your worries into perspective and makes other bad scenarios, such as the interview going terribly, seem more acceptable.
This technique helps me when I start to lose myself in my fears that I won’t end up with a “good” job after graduation. I can think about what would happen if I ended up unemployed. Beyond whatever feelings of dejection and sorrow I would develop, I would be privileged enough to lay in my bed in my parents’ house and start to think about finding other ways to get a job or exploring educational options to make myself a better candidate. And although that occurrence definitely isn’t an ideal situation, it isn’t it isn’t the deadly fate my anxieties suggest it might be. This exercise simultaneously calms my fears about the whole process, while helping me to feel grateful for the support system and privilege granted to me by my parents.
If there’s something on your mind that’s consuming you and taking up a lot of your emotional energy, ask yourself, “what’s the worst thing that could happen?”
Drops of the Week
where I *drop* recommendations of cool things this week
Article
“Aretha Franklin Was America's Truest Voice” by Ann Powers - powerful dedication to an American legend that we lost this past week. May she rest in power.
Book
On Writing by Stephen King - finally finished this memoir/writing guide that I’ve been meaning to get through for many weeks. Stephen King should be praised, if nothing else, for a dedication to his craft and his inability to stop writing. His passion has driven him to publish 58 novels and countless stories, and he has no signs of stopping. This book reignited my dreams of becoming a writer, but that’s a dream for another time.
Playlist
Samurai Champloo and true beats - rediscovered this playlist that I absolutely loved during the junior year of high school. It’s inspired by the soundtrack of the anime Samurai Champloo and is filled with beautiful piano mixed with hip hop beats.
Thanks so much for reading! If you have any comments/concerns or fan/hate mail for me, you know how to reach me (links below).
Love,
Nikhil