Transcript

#422: Fear-Setting: The Most Valuable Exercise I Do Every Month

Optimal minimal. At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. So now I'll do personal questions. Now it is. A cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal emperor scale. No

Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferris, and welcome to a very short episode of the Tim Ferris Show. It is going to be between Let's call it fourteen and fifteen minutes. And it describes something that is incredibly important to me. It is the most valuable exercise that I do at least every quarter, usually every month, and I've been using it a lot in these very uncertain times. It is responsible for my best decisions. And uh biggest successes.

In business and personally. helped me to avoid paralysis by analysis. It's helped me to avoid catastrophic mistakes. And also self destruction. So I want to share this now. I feel there is some urgency to sharing this. It was recorded, that is the audio you're gonna hear, April twenty fourth, twenty seventeen, almost exactly three years ago. It is the talk I am proudest of. And

It was recorded at Ted who has very, very generously agreed to allow me to use this audio. So courtesy of Ted, thank you guys very much. It was in the opening session and streamed nationwide in movie theaters. Which goes to show you how much has changed. It has around seven and a half million

views at this point. You don't need to worry about the visuals because I describe them throughout. The initial picture that I describe is a sepia colored or black and white if you prefer photograph of me smiling ear to ear could not look happier from college. That's all you need to know. Last I would just say there's incredible power in listening. You will get a lot from this. I hope, even if you just listen But there's much more power and results in the doing. So I would suggest listening to this and then if you can. Go to Tim dot blog.

forward slash Ted, that's Tim.blog forward slash Ted, where you can find the video, but you can also find step by step instructions, real world examples for doing fear setting yourself. So without further ado, please enjoy and hopefully benefit from this very vulnerable talk and I hope useful talk on the most valuable exercise I do. Fear setting. This episode is brought to you by AG1, the daily foundational nutritional supplement that supports whole body health. And I do get asked a lot what I would take if I could only take one supplement. And the true answer is invariably AG1. It simply covers a ton of bases. I usually drink it in the mornings and frequently take their travel packs with me.

On the road. So what is AG1? AG1 is a science-driven formulation of vitamins, probiotics, and whole food sourced nutrients in a single scoop. AG1 gives you support for the brain, gut, and immune system. So take ownership of your health and try AG1 today. You will get a free one year supply of vitamin D and five free AG1 travel packs with your first subscription purchase. So learn more, check it out. go to drinkage one dot com slash Tim. That's drink AG One, the number one. Drink AG One dot com slash Tim. Last time, drink AG One dot com. Slash Tim.

Check it out. So this happy pick of me was taken in nineteen ninety nine. I was a senior in college. And it was right after dance practice. I was really, really happy.

And I remember Exactly where I was about a week and a half later. I was sitting in the back of my used minivan. in a campus parking lot. when I decided that I was going to commit suicide.

And I went from deciding to a full blown planning very quickly. And I came this close to the edge of the precipice. the closest I've ever come. And the only reason I took my finger off the trigger was thanks to a few lucky coincidences.

And after the fact that That's what scared me the most, the element of chance. So I became very methodical about testing different ways that I could manage my ups and downs. Which has proven to be a good investment.

Many normal people might have, say, six to ten major depressive episodes in their lives. I have bipolar depression runs in my family. I've had fifty plus. At this point. And I've learned a lot.

I've had a lot of at bats. Many rounds in the ring with darkness. Taking good notes. So I thought rather than get up and give any type of recipe for success or highlight reel I would share my recipe for avoiding self destruction.

And certainly self paralysis. And the tool I found which has proven to be the most reliable safety net for emotional free fall. is actually the same tool that has helped me to make my best business decisions, but it's that is secondary. And it is Stoicism.

That sounds boring. Might think of Spark. Or might conjure an image. Like this. A cow.

Standing in the rain. Not sad. Not particularly happy. Just an impassive creature taking out of her life. Sends its way.

you might not think of the ultimate competitor. Say Bill Belichick. head coach of the New England Patriots. He has the all time NFL record for Super Bowl titles. And stoicism has spread like wildfire in the top of the NFL ranks as a means of mental toughness training in the last few years.

You might not think of The founding fathers. Thomas Jefferson. John Adams. George Washington to name but three students of Stoicism.

George Washington actually had A play about a stoic This was Cato a tragedy performed for his troops at Valley Forge to keep them motivated. So why would people of action focus so much on an ancient philosophy? This seems very academic. And I would encourage you to think about stoicism a little bit differently.

as an operating system for thriving in high stress environments. for making better decisions. And it all started. Here. Kind of.

On a porch. So around three hundred B C In Athens. Someone named Zeno of Sitium. Taught many lectures walking around a painted porch, a stoa.

That later became Stoicism. And in the Greco Roman world People use stoicism as a comprehensive system for doing many, many things. But for our purposes, chief among them was training yourself

to separate what you can control from what you cannot control. And then doing exercises. to focus exclusively on the former. This decreases emotional reactivity. Which can be a superpower.

Conversely Let's say you're a quarterback, you miss a pass, you get furious with yourself, that could cost you a game. If you're a CEO and you fly off the handle. at a very valued employee because of a minor infraction. That could cost you the employee.

If you're a college student, Who say is in a downward spiral. And you feel helpless and hopeless. unabated that could cost you your life. So the stakes are very, very high.

And there are many tools in the toolkit. to get you there, I'm going to focus on one that completely changed my life in 2004. And it found me then because of two things. A very close friend. young guy my age died of pancreatic cancer unexpectedly.

And then my girlfriend, who I thought I was going to marry Walked out. She'd had enough. And uh she didn't give me a Dear John letter. But she did give me

This a dear John Plaque. I'm not making this up. I've kept it. Business are over at five o'clock. She gave this to me to put on my desk for personal health because of the time. I was working on my first real business. Had no idea what I was doing. I was working fourteen plus hour days, seven days a week.

I was using stimulants to get going. I was using depressants to wind down and go to sleep. It was a disaster. Felt completely trapped. And I bought a book on simplicity. To try to find answers.

And I did find a quote that made it made a big difference in my life. Which was We suffer more often in imagination than in reality. By Seneca the Younger. He was a famous stoic writer that took me to his letters.

Which took me to the exercise. Premeditio Molorum. Which means the premeditation of evils. And in simple terms, this is visualizing the worst case scenarios in detail. That you fear.

preventing you from taking action so that you can take action to overcome that paralysis. My problem was Monkey mind, super loud, very incessant. Just thinking my way through problems doesn't work. I needed to capture my thoughts on paper, so I created a written exercise that I called fear setting.

Like goal setting for myself. It consists Of three pages. Super simple. First page.

It's right here. What if I dot dot dot question mark. This is whatever you fear, whatever is causing you anxiety, whatever you're putting off. Could be asking someone out. Ending a relationship. Asking for promotion.

quitting a job, starting a company, could be anything. For me, it was taking my first vacation in four years. And stepping away from my business for a month to go to London. where I could stay in a friend's room for free. to either remove myself as a bottleneck in the business or shut it down. In the first column, define

you're writing down all of the worst things you can imagine happening if you take that step. And you want ten to twenty. I'm not going to go through all of them, but I'll give you two examples. So one was I'll go to London. It will be rainy, I'll get depressed, the whole thing will be a huge waste of time. Number two.

I'll miss a letter from the IRS and I'll get audited. And then you go to the prevent column. And that column you write down the answer to What could I do to prevent each of these bullets from happening, or at the very least

decrease the likelihood even a little bit. So for Getting depressed in London. I could take a portable blue light with me, use it for fifteen minutes in the morning. I knew that helped to stave off depressive episodes. For the IRS bit.

I could change the mailing address on file with the IRS. So the paperwork would go to my accountant instead of to my UPS address. Easy peasy. Then we go to repair. So if

the worst case scenarios happened. What could you do to repair the damage, even a little bit. Or who could you ask for help? So in the first case, London. Well, I could fork over some money, fly to Spain. Get some sun. Undo the damage.

I got into a funk. In the case of missing letter from the IRS, I could call a friend who is a lawyer or ask, say Professor of Law.

what they would recommend, who I should talk to, how had people handled this in the past. So one question to keep in mind as you're doing this first page. is has anyone else in the history of time less intelligent or less driven Figure this out. Chances are the answer is yes.

The second page It's simple. What might be the benefits of an attempt or a partial success? So you can see we're playing up the fears and really taking a conservative look at the upside. So if you attempted whatever you're considering, might you build confidence, develop skills. Emotionally, financially.

Otherwise, what might be the benefits of say a base hit? Spend ten to fifteen minutes on this. Page three. This might be the most important, so don't skip it. The cost of inaction. Humans are very good at considering what might go wrong if we try something new, say ask for a raise.

Вот сир із atrocious cost. of the status quo. Not changing anything. So you should ask yourself. If I avoid this

action or decision. and actions and decisions like it. What might my life look like? in say six months, twelve months, three years. Any further out it starts to seem intangible. And really get detailed.

Again, emotionally, financially. Physically whatever. And when I did this it painted a terrifying picture. I was self medicating. My business was

Going to implode at any moment, at all times if I didn't step away. My relationships were fraying or failing. And I realized that Inaction was no longer an option for me. Those are the three pages. That's it. That's Fear Settling. And after this I realized that on a scale of one to ten

one being minimal impact, ten being maximal impact. If I took the trip I was risking a one to three of temporary and reversible pain for an eight to ten. of positive life changing impact that could be semi permanent.

So I took the trip. None of the disasters came to pass. There were some hiccups, sure. I was able to extricate myself from the business. I ended up extending that trip. for a year and a half around the world.

And that became the basis for my first book that leads me here today. And I can trace all of my biggest wins. and all of my biggest disasters averted back to doing fear setting.

At least once a quarter. It's not a panacea. You'll find that some of your fears are very well founded. But you shouldn't conclude that. without first putting them under a microscope. And it doesn't make all the hard times, the hard choices easy, but it can make a lot of them easier.

profile of one of my favorite modern day stoics. This is Jersey Gregorek. He is a four time world champion in Olympic weightlifting. political refugee.

Published poet. Sixty-two years old. He can still kick my ass and probably most asses in this room. He's an impressive guy. I spend a lot of time on his stowa his porch asking life and training advice. He was part of the solidarity in Poland.

which was a non violent movement. For social change that was violently suppressed. By the government. He lost his career as a firefighter. Then his mentor, a priest, was kidnapped, tortured, killed, and thrown into a river.

He was then threatened, he and his wife had to flee Poland. bounced from country to country landed in the US. with next to nothing sleeping on floors. He now lives in Woodside, California. A very nice place.

And of the ten thousand plus people I've met in my life, I would put him in the top ten in terms of success and happiness. There's a punchline coming. So pay attention. And you replied with two pages of text. This is very unlike him. He is a terse dude.

And not only was he familiar with stoicism, but he pointed out for all of his most important decisions. His inflection points. When he stood up. for his principles and ethics. how he had used stoicism and something akin to fear setting, which blew my mind.

And you close with two things. Number one. He couldn't imagine any life more beautiful than that of a stoic. And the last was his mantra, which he applies to everything, and you can apply to everything. Easy choices.

Hard life. Hard choices Easy life. The hard choices What we most fear doing

Asking, saying These are very often exactly what we most need to do. And the biggest challenges and problems we face will never be solved with comfortable conversations. Whether it's in your own head or with other people.

So I encourage you to ask yourself where in your lives right now Might defining your fears be more important. than defining your goals. Keeping in mind all the while The words of Seneca.

We suffer more often in imagination. than in reality. Thank you very much. Thank you all for listening. And once again, there is power in listening, but there's much more power and results in the doing. So please

Take a look at the text, the step by step instructions. what you can print out, all that you would need to do fear setting yourself at Tim.blog forward slash Ted. That's Tim.blog forward slash Ted. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? And would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun for the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up. in the uh the world of the esoteric as I do, it could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off.

for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it.