How to Think Like the Stoics (and Stop Anxiety)

The Mindset Mentor

Rob Dial

Education, Health & Fitness, Business, Mindset

4.8 • 13.8K Ratings

🗓️ 1 August 2025

⏱️ 16 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Have you ever thought about the worst-case scenario in your life and how it could actually help you succeed? In this episode, I’ll show you the power of negative visualization (also known as defensive pessimism) and why visualizing failure can give you clarity, reduce anxiety, and prepare you for success. Are you ready to stop procrastinating and break your bad habits? If so, I just opened the doors to Mindset 2.0—my full system to help you break through fear, rewire your identity, and follow through like never before. Click here 👉 https://www.coachwithrob.com/enroll-a The Mindset Mentor™ podcast is designed for anyone desiring motivation, direction, and focus in life. Past guests of The Mindset Mentor include Tony Robbins, Matthew McConaughey, Jay Shetty, Andrew Huberman, Lewis Howes, Gregg Braden, Rich Roll and Dr Steven Gundry. Here are some useful links for you… If you want access to a multitude of life advice, self development tips, and exclusive content daily that will help you improve your life, then you can follow me around the web at these links here: Instagram TikTok Facebook Youtube

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast.
0:10.0	I am your host, Rob Dial.
0:13.0	If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another episode.
0:17.0	And also, if you've ever gotten anything from any episode I've ever put out, share an episode
0:21.5	with a friend. You probably know somebody that needs to hear this, and it would be great
0:25.9	to change your life in some sort of way. So if you do that, I would greatly appreciate it.
0:29.8	Today, I'm going to talk to you about something that maybe you've never heard of and
0:34.1	actually sounds like a crazy idea until I tell you the benefits of it. We're going
0:40.3	to be talking about visualization, but not visualizing the life that you want. We're going to do
0:44.2	something that's called reverse visualization. It's also called negative visualization. And you know,
0:50.3	study after study shows how visualization can help you create the life that you want.
0:55.2	But most of the time when we think of visualization, we think about our best selves.
1:00.4	And we think about having all of the money and the happiness and the success and the love that we want.
1:04.9	And we visualize the perfect future.
1:07.1	What I'm going to talk to you about is the absolute exact opposite of that.
1:12.5	What does it look like if you absolutely fail and all shit hits the fan?
1:17.9	That's what we're going to talk about today.
1:19.5	I'm going to talk to you about something that's called negative visualization.
1:22.4	It's also called defense pessimism.
1:25.1	The idea originally comes from, if you go back thousands of years ago, from
1:29.2	stoic philosophy. And at its simplest form, the idea is to visualize the thing that you are
1:35.4	most afraid of happening. Visualize the absolute worst that can happen. You might be like,
	...

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