EXPERIMENT: Fear Setting
In 2017, Tim Ferriss, bestselling author of The 4-Hour Workweek, Tools of Titans, Tribe of Mentors and more, gave a TED talk on why you should define your fears instead of your goals. It sounds counterintuitive, but the reasoning behind this approach is actually really solid.
This experiment is taken directly from an exercise Ferriss came up with back in the early 2000s. At the time, he was struggling with bipolar depression, relationship issues, trying to keep his first real business afloat and more, and came close to taking his own life. Finally, he decided enough was enough, and went looking for a solution.
His search led him to Stoicism, a school of philosophy which originated in ancient Greece. Stoic philosophy provides a simple, practical and comprehensive approach to living well by regaining control over your mind, body and emotions. In practicing it, you train yourself to separate what you can control from what you cannot control, and to focus your energy exclusively on the former. Living this way decreases emotional reactivity, which does sound a bit dreary when put that way — isn’t the point of life to experience it in all its glorious ups and downs, after all? Well, sure, but if you’re getting too carried away in the fleeting highs, and struggling not to drown in the inevitable lows, you end up wasting a lot of precious energy that could be reinvested into living a more balanced, more enjoyable life. Learning to keep your senses in check can be a superpower, especially in high stakes situations where losing your cool could cost you your job, your success, your relationship... even your life.
In Stoicism, there is a practice known as Premeditatio Malorum, or the “premeditation of evils.” Basically, what you do is visualise the worst case scenarios in great detail, so you can identify and overcome the paralysis that is preventing you from taking action, so you can then go out and do what you need to do. To provide greater clarity and make this even more actionable, Ferriss came up with a written exercise which he calls “fear setting” — like goal setting, but arguably much more powerful.
The exercise itself is simple, and consists of three pages.
PAGE 1: WHAT IF I…?
Start off by choosing a decision you have to make or action you have to take, but have been putting off because you’re scared, or anxious, or worried it might not turn out the way you want it to. For the purposes of this exercise, let’s say you’re thinking about leaving your dead-end corporate job to pursue something you’re really passionate about — let’s say, selling handmade jewellery. Then:
Define
Define what the absolute worst case scenario would be, if you were to take that action. Come up with 10-20 outcomes, go into great detail, really make it suck big time. Maybe absolutely no one would buy your jewellery, your business would flop, you’d go into debt, you’d lose your house, you’d end up homeless or sleeping on other people’s couches. Sounds legit — let’s move on.
Prevent
Once you’ve defined the shittiest possible outcomes, list out all the ways you could prevent these things from happening, or at least decrease the likelihood of them happening, even a little bit. Perhaps you could look into marketing initiatives — tell your friends, tell them to tell their friends, set up a social media account, set up shop at bazaars on weekends, brush up on your skills to make your products really stand out, develop a signature style, tell stylists and influencers about your product so they can spread the word, etc. You could set aside some money before leaving your job so you have a buffer during the first few months when your business is still in its early stages. You could start running your jewellery business alongside your corporate job for a while, until it’s gained enough momentum for you to take the plunge and get into it full time.
Repair
Finally, write down all the ways you could repair the situation, or who you could ask for help if the worst case scenario were to play out. If your business turned out to be a total flop, you could take stock of what didn’t work, and figure out how to address those issues if you were to start afresh. For example, if nobody bought your products, was it because they didn’t like them, or didn’t know about them, or thought the price wasn’t right, or something else altogether? If you went into debt, could you work out a way to restructure your repayment plan in a way that takes some pressure off you while you pick yourself back up? Who could you ask for help and support during that time? Whose couch could you crash on while you work things out?
(Also, a question Ferriss encourages you to keep in mind while filling out this first page is: Has anyone else in the history of time, less intelligent or less driven than I am, figured this out? Because chances are, the answer is yes, and that knowledge in itself is pretty reassuring.)
PAGE 2: WHAT MIGHT BE THE BENEFITS OF AN ATTEMPT OR PARTIAL SUCCESS?
On the next page of this exercise, take a really conservative look at what you stand to gain out of taking that action you’re afraid of. Maybe you’d gain confidence, or strength, or resilience, or some sort of skill out of the experience — at the very least, you’d gain an idea of what not to do next time. (As you can see, you’re really going to play up the fears and downplay the rewards in this exercise.)
PAGE 3: THE COST OF INACTION
This is arguably the most important part of this exercise, and Ferriss specifically points out that this is the page you don’t wanna skip. We as humans are often very good at extrapolating what might go wrong if we do something differently, but we don’t really stop to think about the cost of sticking to the status quo. If you didn’t take the action, and continued on as usual, what might your life look like in 6 months? 12 months? 3 years? Get really detailed with this — what would that look like for you emotionally, mentally, physically, spiritually, financially, socially...?
Ferriss says in his talk that when he did this exercise, it painted a terrifying picture. He realised he was at the end of his rope, and continuing down the path he was on was absolutely not an option. So he decided to go ahead on that trip he’d been so unsure about — and ended up extending what was supposed to be a month-long stay in London into a year-and-a-half-long adventure around the world, which in turn led to him writing his first bestselling book, The 4-Hour Workweek.
Ferriss credits this exercise for helping him make the decisions behind some of his biggest wins and biggest disasters averted, and makes it a point to do this at least once a quarter. Of course, it isn’t going to solve all your fears — you may discover, by doing this exercise, that some of your fears are indeed well-founded. But you shouldn’t come to that conclusion, he says, without first putting those fears under a microscope the way this exercise does.
So, we’ll end this experiment the same way Ferriss ends his talk:
“I encourage you to ask yourselves: Where in your lives right now might defining your fears be more important than defining your goals?”
Watch the full video above, or click here to watch it on YouTube. And if you try this experiment, be sure to share it with us on Instagram using the hashtag #brazenexperiments, and tag us @brazen.mag too! (In fact, while you’re at it, why not tag the man himself, @timferriss?)
