You don’t get to be surprised
The Stoics have a practice called premeditatio malorum. Rehearsal of evils. You sit down, on purpose, and walk through what could go wrong today. The meeting that tanks. The injury. The call you don't want. The version of the day where nothing works.
It sounds morbid. It's not. It's the cheapest form of armor ever invented.
But here's what nobody tells you about it.
It costs you your excuses.
In the Navy, we ran drills for things we hoped would never happen. Fire at sea. Man overboard. Flooding. Loss of steering at the worst possible moment. You run the drill enough times and something shifts. You stop being the guy who freezes. You start being the guy who moves.
That's the gift. That's also the bill.
Because once you've drilled it, the excuse is gone. You can't say I didn't see it coming. You can't say nobody prepared me. You saw it. You prepared. The only question left is what you did with the warning.
Most people won't pay that price. They'd rather be surprised. Being surprised is comfortable. It lets you off the hook. If you didn't know, you can't be blamed. If you didn't imagine it, you can't be expected to have a plan.
Premeditatio malorum strips that cover off you.
Rehearse the layoff and you can't claim the market betrayed you. You already knew.
Rehearse the relationship going cold and you can't claim you were blindsided. You already knew.
Rehearse the worst version of your kid's hard year, your health scan, your business quarter, your promotion that doesn't come. And now you can't claim the universe is unfair. You already knew it was possible. You just hoped it wouldn't land on you.
This is why the practice is rare. Not because it's hard to do. It takes ten minutes. It's rare because people don't want to give up the defense of surprise. Surprise is the last place to hide.
Try this week:
Pick one thing you're quietly counting on going right. Not the obvious disasters. The quiet assumption. The client that'll renew. The teammate who'll cover. The body that'll keep showing up the way it has.
Spend five minutes on paper writing what you'd do if it didn't.
Not to manifest the bad outcome. To remove your right to be shocked by it.
You'll notice something. The fear gets smaller. The plan gets sharper. And the next time life tests you on it, you'll already know your first move.
You won't get to be surprised. You'll get to be ready.
That's the trade.
Train hard. Think clearly. Lead well.
Jacob