Entertaining the most extreme consequences can be the best way to finally neuter an otherwise nagging concern. One by one, we should confront the worst, and see that it is, for the most part, very survivable.

Philosophical Meditation, a practice with the premise that a decisive share of the trouble in our minds comes from thoughts and feelings that have not been untangled, examined and confronted with sufficient attention.

Sorry, we’re unable to display this type of content.

I am wise not because I know, but because I know I don’t know.

Society has no shortage of people and organisations offering to guide us around distant continents, but very few that will help us with the arguably far more important task of travelling around the byways of our own minds.

If we have sizeable reserves of self-love, we might feel we can afford to admit mistakes and still believe in our basic decency. Yet if our self-love is very fragile, no admission of guilt or error is ever possible; it would sap the last of our limited self-regard.

– What am I presently anxious about? – What am I presently upset about? – What am I presently excited about?

We are sad about particular things, but confronting them would be so arduous that we generalise and universalise the sadness. We don’t say that X or Y has made us sad; we say that everything is terrible and everyone is awful.

Most so-called ‘addictions’ are at heart symptoms of insistent difficult feelings that we haven’t found a way to address. Insomnia is revenge for thoughts we have refused to have in the day.