The Inner Citadel



## Voluntary Discomfort, Premeditation, and the Embrace of Fate

> *"Set aside a certain number of days, during which you shall be content with the scantiest and cheapest fare, with coarse and rough dress, saying to yourself the while: 'Is this the condition that I feared?' It is precisely in times of immunity from care that the soul should toughen itself beforehand for occasions of greater stress."*
> — Seneca, *Letters to Lucilius* 18.5–6 (Richard Mott Gummere)

A discipline that has only known comfort is a discipline that will break at the first frost. Phase III introduces **voluntary discomfort** — the Stoic practice of rehearsing hardship by choice, so that when hardship arrives unchosen, you have already met it. You will also practice *premeditatio malorum* (the deliberate rehearsal of what could go wrong) and *memento mori* (the deliberate remembrance of death). The point is not to suffer. The point is to discover that you can.