Think about how you relate to the emotions you don't want to feel and that you try to avoid: sadness or anger for example.
But these negative emotions are going to come up and when you identify them as bad and try to refuse them with all your energy, what happens is that you give them even more power.

What You Resist Tends To Persist

Death for example is outside of your control and it happens to everyone.
But you can control the way you relate to it: instead of viewing it as a moment of immense sadness, make it a great catalyzing help.

Thinking About Sad Moments: An Empowering Practice

It is a philosophical system that concentrates on separating the things you can control from the things you cannot control and then teaches you to introduce in your daily routine habits that help you focus most of your energy on the things that are under your control.

A Simplified Definition Of Stoicism

Seeking out artistic cues to catalyze emotions that previously you've tried to avoid will help you to relate differently to events like death. Because most likely what you're horrified about is not so much death, but the way you're emotionally relating to the concept of death. 
Watching films that are scary, sad or depressive, and then contrasting that with something that is on the opposite end of the spectrum will help you understand that these moments of sadness are transient and that you can switch them off and on with cues in your environment.

Evoking Sad Emotions Deliberately

Part of the stoic practice is related to meditating on the certainty of death and finding freedom is it instead of being overwhelmed by it.
Thinking about death highlights the short duration of life; this practice gives us a sense of urgency to pursue the things that are important to us. Without this sense of urgency that happens when we think about death, it becomes easy for us to postpone things, to push them for an undefined "tomorrow" until it's too late.

Memento Mori

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About Tim Ferriss:
Tim Ferriss is one of Fast Company’s “Most Innovative Business People” and an early-stage tech investor/advisor in Uber, Facebook, Twitter, Shopify, Duolingo, Alibaba, and 50+ other companies. He is also the author of five #1 New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestsellers: The 4-Hour Workweek, The 4-Hour Body, The 4-Hour Chef, Tools of Titans and Tribe of Mentors. The Observer and other media have named him “the Oprah of audio” due to the influence of his podcast, The Tim Ferriss Show, which has exceeded 400 million downloads and been selected for “Best of iTunes” three years running.

Connect with Tim Ferriss:
Sign up for "5-Bullet Friday" (Tim's email newsletter): https://go.tim.blog/5-bullet-friday-1/ 
Visit the Tim Ferriss PODCAST: https://tim.blog/podcast/
Visit the Tim Ferriss BLOG: https://tim.blog/
Follow Tim Ferriss on TWITTER: https://twitter.com/tferriss/
Follow Tim Ferriss on INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/timferriss/
Like Tim Ferriss on FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/TimFerriss/

Tim Ferriss has been listed as one of Fast Company’s “Most Innovative Business People” and one of Fortune’s “40 under 40.” He is an early-stage technology investor/advisor (Uber, Facebook, Shopify, Duolingo, Alibaba, and 50+ others) and the author of five #1 New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestsellers, including The 4-Hour Workweek and Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers. The Observer and other media have called Tim “the Oprah of audio” due to the influence of The Tim Ferriss Show podcast, which is the first business/interview podcast to exceed 100 million downloads. It has now exceeded 800 million downloads. 

Listen to The Tim Ferriss Show podcast: https://tim.blog/podcast
Sign up for Tim's "5-Bullet Friday" free email newsletter with 1.5M+ subscribers: https://tim.blog/friday 


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