HabitAttested · Stoicism
Voluntary discomfort
Court lack now and then, so as to depend on it no longer.
, following Seneca, would at times impose cold, hunger or plainness on themselves to train against fearing lack. The point is not to suffer, but to find that you come through very well what you dreaded. Today it is an antidote to comfort-dependence and a powerful source of gratitude.
- Pick a small, safe, voluntary deprivation (a cold shower, skipping a meal, walking instead of driving), telling yourself plainly that it is chosen and time-limited.
- During the trial, watch your thoughts: is the real discomfort as strong as the fear you had of it?
- When comfort returns, savour it fully: chosen deprivation revives gratitude for the ordinary.
Stay in discomfort, never danger. This habit is not suitable in case of a health problem, an eating disorder or endured precarity: it loses all meaning if it is not freely chosen.
Enacts
- Bodily pleasures · Asceticism
- Relation to desire · Extinction and detachment
Source: Stoicism
Appears in
- The desire that destroys us — A desire we know to be harmful returns despite every decision against it: should we affirm it as part of ourselves, dismiss it as a stray impulse, or admit that we do not really govern our desires at all?