I’m done with pre-suffering.

Mindful LeadershipStress & ResiliencePersonal Growth

Feb 3

A client said something to me recently that stopped me.

We were talking about her goals for this year – stretching herself, taking on more, growing into what’s next.

At one point she paused and said:

“I’m done with pre-suffering.”
I’m officially done with it.
It’s such a waste.”

And instantly, I knew exactly what she meant.

Over the last few years, she’s been doing deep work – expanding her capacity, refining how she engages, and showing up more intentionally not just at work, but at home.

And as we talked about what she wanted 2026 to look like, she named something that so many of us do without realizing it:

She had been living parts of her life before they happened.

Running worst-case scenarios.
Rehearsing conversations that hadn’t occurred.
Bracing for outcomes that might never come.

She called it pre-suffering.
And she was done.

Because here’s the truth we rarely pause to notice:

We don’t just experience hard things once.
We often experience them hundreds of times before they happen.

In our imagination.
In our planning.
In our defense.
In our worry.

And the irony?

The thing we fear most often doesn’t happen the way we anticipate.

But the real cost comes earlier.

Every one of those moments we spend trying to “protect ourselves” pulls from a limited resource.

As neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett describes it, we all operate with a daily “body budget.”

A budget shaped by:

How we slept.
What we ate.
What we’re carrying emotionally.
What we’re navigating personally.

Every time we replay a feared outcome,
every time we rehearse a catastrophe,
every time we brace for something that hasn’t happened –
we spend energy we may need later.

Not solving the problem.
Just draining ourselves.

My client realized something important:

If she wanted to show up this year with clarity, steadiness, and real capacity…
she couldn’t afford to keep paying for futures that might never arrive.

You might be thinking, “That sounds great – but how do you stop doing that?”

That’s the work.

This is why mindfulness isn’t about calming down.
It’s about training meta-cognition – the ability to notice when your mind has wandered into an unhelpful future… and gently bring it back.

To catch the moment your thinking starts tightening.
To unhook.
To redirect.

Not perfectly.
But earlier.

I see this constantly with clients.

When they finally notice they’re pre-suffering…
and interrupt it…
even briefly…
their bodies soften.
their thinking clears.
their energy returns.

Not because the situation changed.
But because they stopped living it before it happened.

What struck me most was how simply she said it:

“I’m done with pre-suffering.”

Not as a resolution.
As a boundary.

So as you step further into this year, I’ll offer you a gentle question:

Where might you be spending energy on things that haven’t actually happened yet?

And what would change if you reclaimed even a small part of that?

Not by forcing positivity.
Not by bypassing reality.
But by noticing sooner…
and choosing to meet what’s actually here.
There is so much strength in that.