Introducing the Leibniz Stretch - a New Addition to Your Daily Routine
A Metaphysical Exercise for the Doomscrolling Age.
A couple years ago in Mexico City, I found myself in a pulque-fueled conversation with a local philosopher-psychologist who was explaining to me his rationale for why a citizenry must always cultivate a capacity for violence with which to threaten the government.
“That’s pretty much the opposite of what I believe,” I told him. “Wherever possible, people should use their power to end the cycle of violence. Deep down, people want to do the right thing, and they want peace.”
The philosopher-psychologist laughed, not in a cruel way, but almost with pity. “You know who you sound like right now?” he asked. “Leibniz. You know, the best of all possible worlds?”
I was familiar with Leibniz, but it wasn’t until I got home and started brushing up on my history that I realized how a sick a burn this was. Leibniz, known as the consummate optimist, was widely ridiculed by the likes of Voltiare and Schopenhauer, who called his best of all possible worlds argument “the most absurd statement ever made.” This guy wasn’t just calling me naïve; he was saying my naiveté was over 300 years out of fashion. It was the kind of offhand intellectual jab that stuck with me—less because it hurt than because I wasn’t sure he was entirely wrong.
But I had a sneaking suspicion that this point of view — that the world is perfect just as it is, that even the stuff that seems stupid or cruel or absurd or evil right now serves an essential purpose in some grander sweep of destiny — was magical in microdoses. And in a world where we exercise our skeptical and critical minds all the time, building up the strength for radical acceptance and reverential humility and gratitude could make us healthier and smarter. So I came up with an easy exercise to slot into a daily routine.
Mental Posture and the Bias Toward Brokenness
We all know the negative effects hunching over a computer all day has on our bodies: tight hips, weak hamstrings and glutes, muscle imbalance, forward head posture, hypertension, etc. But what has all this done to our sense of reality? Could there be an analogy between how we sit and how we think? Here comes the analogy, and I honestly don’t think it’s too much of a stretch (pun very much intended) that it could make you feel better and think smarter as a result.
Just like our bodies tend to bend around our screens, our way of seeing the world bends around what those screens show us and how we process it all. First of all, we love bad news. We spend a disproportionate amount of our time learning about the worst people in the world: criminals, politicians, greedy robber barons, narcissists, and others whose behavior is just disgusting. And then we look back out at the world, and suddenly everyone looks a little more sinister and grotesque.
But it’s not just negativity bias that’s warping the way we think. There’s something more subtle at play, and it’s insidious because, much like the work we do on those screens, it’s quite often beneficial to ourselves and the world. What I’m talking about is systemic thinking, a powerful way of seeing the world not just as a set of linear relationships and causes and effects, but as an interconnected, interrelated, and interdependent collection of moving pieces more analogous to a biological ecosystem than a car engine. Systemic thinking allows us to grasp ideas like patriarchy (why women’s work is undervalued), social capital (why privilege sticks), and late-stage capitalism (why everything feels extractive) — the sorts of things we need to be able to grapple with at this point in history.
The trouble with systemic thinking, though, is that it’s sometimes so powerful that we can’t stop seeing things through one particular system. Just like as Maslow is said to have observed, that the person with only a hammer will treat everything as if it were a nail, the person with a particularly effective systemic filter will often try to overfit their theory to the point where it’s no longer helpful in either sense-making or simple personal satisfaction. Your boss is a jerk. Is it because he’s a man in a patriarchal system? Maybe. Or maybe he’s just a jerk. If the model can’t tell us which, it might not be helping.
So you’re left with two options. First, you can recognize that all systemic models are insufficient and incomplete, and you can begin a lifelong project of understanding an ecology of systems and developing a capacity to hold several or many of them at the same time, even (or especially) when they contradict each other. Second, you can do a little mental exercise, what I call the “Leibniz Stretch,” in order to balance out the effects of so much systemic thinking and negative news. By all means, do the first one, and take your time with it — but start with the stretch, because not only will it help with getting your mind around an ecology of systems, it will make you feel more agency, openness, peace, and belonging.
Gottfried Leibniz, the Man Behind the Stetch
Gottfried Leibniz was born in 1646, and in his life did a few minor things like inventing calculus (at around the same time as Newton, but Leibniz did it better), creating the binary arithmetic that underpins all of today’s computers, and serving as Imperial Court Councillor to the Habsburgs in Vienna, but it his work as a philosopher that most interests us here.
Leibniz was a devout Christian, and he wanted to address the issue that, if God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and perfectly good, why is there such horrible suffering and evil to be found? His answer, to put it bluntly, is that we’re just too stupid to know what God knows, and for all we know, God’s doing the best He can given the circumstances, and if anything, anywhere, were any different, the whole universe would be worse. Therefore, we must be living in the best of all possible worlds.
Centuries later, Bertrand Russell would write, “The doctrine that this is the best of all possible worlds is intended to be edifying, but it is hard for those who live in it to believe it.” And it is pretty much impossible for anyone today to believe it wholeheartedly — but what if we could just catch a glimpse of it, not to convince ourselves that it’s true, but to see the universe from such a grateful perspective? After all, we spend all our days exercising our ability to find things that are wrong and unfair; why not stretch in the other direction, so we could expand our capacity for seeing the good and the beautiful?
How to Do a “Leibniz Stretch”
Purpose: Train your mind to temporarily hold the possibility that this moment, as it is, might be part of the best possible world — opening space for paradoxical gratitude, radical acceptance, and creative response.
Reminder: This is not a belief system. It’s a posture — something to inhabit briefly to see what happens.
1️⃣ Ground Yourself
Sit comfortably or lie down.
Take a few slow, deep breaths. Feel your body’s contact with the ground or chair.
Allow your mind to settle.
2️⃣ Name What’s Present
Silently acknowledge what’s arising:
Emotions (fear, joy, boredom…)
Thoughts (plans, regrets, judgments…)
Sensations (warmth, aches, tension…).
Don’t push anything away or try to change it.
3️⃣ Introduce the Thought
Gently invite this idea into awareness:
> “What if this moment, with all its imperfections, is exactly as it needs to be in the best of all possible worlds?”
Notice resistance, disbelief, or discomfort — these are natural. Welcome them, too.
4️⃣ Hold the Possibility
You don’t have to believe it — just try it on like a thought experiment.
Let your mind stretch to include even difficult events or feelings as potentially necessary for a greater unfolding you can’t yet see.
Stay with this for a minute or two, or longer if you like.
5️⃣ Reflect & Recenter
Afterward, ask yourself:
Did anything shift in how I relate to my situation?
Did I glimpse gratitude, relief, or a broader perspective?
Remind yourself that you can revisit this stretch anytime — especially when you feel stuck, resentful, or despairing.
Going Further
On the intellectual side, you can imagine that — up until this very moment — free will has not existed. People’s fates have been determined by their culture and upbringing; clashes of cultures and civilizations were inevitable and their outcomes preordained; our behavior as human beings is shaped by eons of evolution of which we had no choice but to emerge as the product.
Except now, at this very moment, you have been granted your free will. You can forgive yourself for everything you’ve done, and you can forgive everyone else, because maybe they still don’t have free will. But now you do, and you bear responsibility for keeping this imperfect world the best of all possible worlds.
On the spiritual side, the Leibniz Stretch pairs well with Metta Mediation, which I wrote about earlier.
If you try it out, I’d love to hear your experiences. Or just tell me about your vacation in Mexico, which is, in its own way, the best of all possible worlds.
Oh my gosh I absolutely loved this. Much needed perspective shift. Going to re-stack it and might sample a paragraph or two (or heck, even the whole exercise!) in an upcoming Substack post of my own. It's so helpful. Thank you so much, Robert.