View from above

Marcus Aurelius ruled the Roman Empire from 161 to 180 CE, through wars, rebellion and a devastating plague. At night, often on campaign, he wrote private notes to himself in Greek. They were never meant to be read. Today we call them the Meditations.

Again and again he pictured looking down on the world from far above:

From up there, his own troubles were somewhere among all that motion: real, and also one small part of a very large picture. He often went across time as well, picturing the generations before him and after him, all just as busy and all gone.

Modern research points the same way. Psychologists call it self-distancing. In one set of studies, people who prepared for a stressful speech by talking to themselves in the third person ("Why is Ethan nervous?") felt less anxious, gave better speeches and dwelled on them less afterward than people who used "I".

There's a related finding with a good name: Solomon's paradox. People reason more wisely about a friend's problem than their own, weighing more viewpoints and admitting what they don't know. When they imagine their own problem from a distance, as if it were happening to someone else, the gap closes.

Distance works because a worry seen up close leaves no room for anything else. Seen from further away, it sits among everything else that matters, and you can judge its size.

One caution: this isn't for grief. A loss doesn't get smaller seen from orbit, and trying to make it smaller can feel like betraying it. Use it for the worries that have grown larger than they are.

Theo, three weeks into a new job, sent an announcement to the whole company with his manager's name spelled wrong. Two people replied with a laughing emoji. It's now 10pm and he's still replaying it, sure that everyone has him down as careless and that his manager is quietly furious.