When we think of the archetypal warrior, we will almost certainly be sure to think of someone brave, courageous, and seemingly fearless.
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| Overcome Fear |
In our personal lives, there are no real dragons to slay. Rather, they take on many other forms, whether they be illness, whether they be debt, or whether they be the struggle of going to the gym every day…
Be A Hero Always Say I Have No Fear
How to use fear setting
If you're a fan of reading self-help literature then chances are that at some point you will have written down your goals.
Fear-Setting is helpful in several settings, including When making decisions about what to do next… In both business and personal life, fear-setting helps you see the reality of the situation more clearly to make the best decision.
This is something that almost every guru seems to advise and that many claims can help you to accomplish your dreams by better defining and visualizing them. But in Tim Ferriss' 4 Hour Workweek this advice is turned on its head somewhat.
While Tim doesn't necessarily have a problem with goal setting per se, he also recommends doing essentially the opposite by 'fear setting'. And he claims it can do a great deal more than goal setting when it comes to realizing your aims and getting more from life…
What is Fear Setting?
The general idea behind fear setting is that you're defining the fears that are holding you back so that you can face them.
In most cases, Tim postulates that after doing this you'll find that your fears are actually relatively unfounded and thus will move forward and past them. Normally our fears are of 'irreversible' negative outcomes, but actually, these are rarer than you might think…
So what you do is to write down the absolute worst possible outcomes for doing whatever it is you want to do, and then write down all the ways you'd cope with the situation or possibly reverse it.
An Example:
Changing Career Let's take changing careers as an example. This is something that a lot of people want to do, but feel held back by fear of the potential repercussions. By defining those fears though, you can minimize their potency. So if you were going to write down the worst possible outcomes for changing careers, it might well look something like this:
• I might leave my job only to fail to find another job
• I might be unable to pay the mortgage and thus be forced to move home
• This could upset my partner so much they leave me
• I might get the job I think I want and find out I hate it more than my last job
• I might apply to other jobs only to get rejected by everyone and end up damaging my ego
These are all real concerns, but now if you think about all the ways you can manage risk and reduce the impacts of those negative outcomes you'll find your fears aren't all that founded…
• I can look for jobs without leaving my current job to avoid the risk of unemployment. No one has to know.
• This will also be a lot less reckless in the eyes of my partner.
• Alternatively I could speak to my boss about my problems and see if there are other positions within my organization.
• If I do end up out of work I could always speak to my old boss about getting my job back/work in a supermarket while I look for other work/work for Dad/live off of savings for a couple of months/move back home with the parents!
• If my partner leaves me for trying to become happier then I need to reassess that relationship
• If I don't like the job I find next then I will feel more confident about job hunting again in the future.
• If I struggle to get accepted anywhere I can work on my interview technique/improve my CV/seek career guidance. All of which will be useful experiences anyway.
Accept your past without regret, handle your present with confidence, and face your future with confidence.
Using Stoicism in Your Own Life
This might not sound like a particularly helpful stance to take on things, but then that’s because most of us are highly trained into only accepting positive viewpoints.
This is the general conceit of countless self-help books and even Hollywood films.
Dream big and you can get what you want! In fact, it’s pretty much the driving force behind capitalism. But the Stoics take the opposite approach. They prepare for the storm. They learn to enjoy life even when things aren’t going their way and they recognize hardship as a challenge and an opportunity for growth.
When you go through life feeling entitled to everything going your way, how can you expect to be happy? And how can you be expected to face genuinely difficult challenges? So how does rejecting this incessant positivity help? How do you practically apply stoicism in your own life?
Always try to represent yourself as Happy initially, At first, it will become your look, Gradually it will become your habit, And finally, it becomes your personality.
Negative Visualization
One suggestion from stoicism is something called ‘negative visualization’ – the idea that you visualize your fears rather than your goals.
Instead of picturing things going perfectly to plan, instead, picture things at their very worst. Imagine how your plans can fail and picture what life would be like if all of your worst fears came true. What this does is first help you to prepare for those worst-case scenarios.
Once you know what your fears actually look like, you can then think about how you would cope in that scenario. Often, you’ll find that this worst-case scenario is not as bad as you at first thought it would be. And in other cases, you’ll find that you can actually find ways to cope with that situation.
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| Overcome Fear By Meditation |
If this sounds familiar then that’s because it’s precisely the same concept that helped you to come up with his Fear Setting technique.
Be Content With the Scantiest and Cheapest Fare
The general idea here is that you should not only visualize your worst-case scenario but also try living it. That might mean spending a week living off of minimum salary, it might even mean sleeping rough. In either case, this teaches you not only that you can handle your worst fears – and therefore have less reason to be afraid – but also that you actually don’t need material possessions to be happy.
This is actually very important to cultivate. It takes great discipline to part with your possessions and belongings but the result is freedom from fear and also from many physical restrictions.
If you are weighed down by possessions and belongings, then you will not be able to move home freely. You will spend a lot of time cleaning and attending to things that do not help you further your goals. And ultimately, you will have much more to fear. The more you own, the more you have to lose. This creates a sense of fear. So, try to declutter and live a more focused and minimalist life. At the very least, learn to detach yourself from physical possessions and remember that they are true ‘just things’.
They are a means to an end and if you must sacrifice them, so be it. Selling your widescreen TV or turning down a holiday to pay off debt or pay for your child’s tuition – those are warrior-like choices.
Expect the Worst you will never be disappointed
Think about the last time you swore with anger. Chances are that it was not because it rained or because you found you were in debt.
More likely, it was because you dropped something on your toe, or because you broke your favorite possession. The point is that the anger comes from the surprise, not the disappointment. You don’t swear when it rains because you know that rain is a possibility.
Therefore, if you are angry, this then suggests that you didn’t expect whatever happened to you and this is arguably your own fault. If you accept that bad things happen and if you accept that sometimes things won’t go to plan, then you will have no need to be angry – because you will have accounted for it and prepared mentally for it. Now, when your partner cheats on you, or when a service provider doesn’t deliver a good service, you will think of it as being simply a part of life – just like the rain.
Control Your Reaction
Stoicism means submitting to the fact that you have scant-to-no control over reality. But at the same time, it also means taking solace in the knowledge that these outside factors can’t hurt you – only your reaction can. You can’t control what happens to you but you can control what you make of that event and your own interpretation of it. Being mentally prepared for things that could go wrong is one good example of this in action. Likewise, though, you might also simply decide not to let things affect you – to take a step back from them and to deal with the consequences rather than thrashing against things that you cannot change. This is something we’ll be addressing more closely in upcoming chapters: mindfulness and the ability to decide how you want to react to the things going on around you.
But simply by remembering that tough things happen and it’s your job to deal with them, you should find you can I actually think that Rocky Balboa is one of the great modern stoics – and one of his more recent famous quotes summarizes the ideas of Seneca and Marcus Aurelius perfectly:
The world isn't all sunshine and rainbows. It's a very mean and nasty place... and I don´t care how tough you are, it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me or nobody, are gonna hit as hard as life. But ain't about how hard you hit... It's about how hard you can get hit, and keep moving forward... how much you can take, and keep moving forward. That´s how winning is done.
Control of mind leads to a higher power
Remember your goals and your vision. Work toward them. Stick to your code. Try to make a difference and focus on what you leave behind. That might mean protecting your family even when it means putting yourself at risk, or it might mean taking chances to chase after a bigger goal.
