Frame your thoughts like this—you are an old person, you won’t let yourself be enslaved by this any longer, no longer pulled like a puppet by every impulse, and you’ll stop complaining about your present fortune or dreading the future.”
—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 2.2
Why do we believe our thoughts? Why do we assent so quickly to our perceptions? How much of our suffering is simply a matter of how we’re holding and imagining a situation?
My wife’s partner is on the verge of a breakdown due to the stress and anxiety they’re feeling about their job and is threatening to detonate the company they recently formed. Let no one say that ones anxiety and perceptions are private matters. It’s our duty to root out our kilesas before they swallow us and those around us whole.
Cattāri Brahmavihārā 
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