Stoicism: Night before a big test/paper/deadline/exam

So… Whatever it is that you do today, will affect your future profoundly tomorrow.

Maybe you didn’t study as much.

Maybe you didn’t work hard enough to deliver whatever it is you have to deliver.

If it sounds like you, procrastinate a little bit more and keep reading…

“Life is hard”…

You will fail tomorrow. You will crash and burn. Everything that is in your head, the worst of it, it will happen. Maybe you will get the bad news, that you’ll die soon, maybe you just stare at the piece of paper not knowing what to write. Maybe you will have nothing to show for for your paper. Maybe your group members will abandon you with an unfinished project.

Yes, maybe that will happen. And then what? So you failed a test, you can retake it. Yeah, yeah, it feels like the end of times, “But this is my only chance, there is no retaking it!!!!”, Yeah you can retake it. Even olympic athletes have second chances, even third and fourth chances. So you couldn’t finish your project in time, if your teacher isn’t a nice person and doesn’t understand you, so what? You can continue from where you left off.

So your exam tells you “you have 6 weeks to live” or even “1 week”. You get to live, not exist, but really live for that time. You get to pay attention to life and be present for 1 whole week, that is more than some people live in 80 years.

We are all gonna die. Life is hard, it is unfair, you being anxious about it changes nothing. So you can choose now to be anxious, or to be calm. You can’t change many things, but you can change yourself and how you think. With that, you change the world.

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Be here now, breathe, if you are awake in bed, go to another room, sit, and count your breaths up to 1.000.000.

Do it, come to bed when exausted, you’ll feel better than.