Fear-Setting: Questions to Help You Evaluate & Overcome Your Fears

In this episode, I take you through a powerful exercise from Tim Ferriss called fear-setting. This exercise is meant to address your fears, reduce risks, and move forward towards what you want in life.

You'll definitely want a journal or blank word document for this exercise! Get ready to confront your fears and take that next small step forward toward your dreams.

Fear-Setting Questions

1. Write down the change you are making and list 10-20 worst possible outcomes
2. Identify actions you could take to mitigate or prevent those situations 
3. List some steps or actions you might take to repair what happened and/or get back to where you are today
4. What are some benefits of an attempt or partial success? 
5. What is the cost of inaction in 3 months, 12 months, a few years? 
6. What is the very next small step you could take to move forward? 

Mentioned in the Episode:
Tim Ferriss' TED Talk & Blog: https://tim.blog/2017/05/15/fear-setting/

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Transcript

Lynn Grogan [00:00:00]:
Welcome back to the Courageously Unconventional podcast. I'm your host, Lynn Grogan, and lately, I have been thinking a lot about what holds people back from living their dreams, and why some people move forward and some don't. So I don't think that some people are inherently braver than others or more capable or anything like that. I truly believe that we all have the ability to do amazing things and go well beyond our comfort zones. But sometimes, we just need help thinking about things differently and getting support around what's holding us back. So that's what we're gonna do today. I am going to take you through an exercise called fear setting to help you address your fears and move forward toward what you want in life. So I learned this fear setting framework from Tim Ferriss.

Lynn Grogan [00:00:49]:
If you're not familiar with Tim Ferriss, he's an author of books like the 4 hour work week and tools for titans, and he also has a popular podcast with his name, the Tim Ferriss show. So the name fear setting is an alternative to the concept of goal setting. In goal setting, you focus on your goals. In fear setting, you focus in on your fears. And it's based on stoic philosophy and involves writing down and visualizing your fears, and then considering the best and worst case scenarios, and what not taking action will cost you. So fear setting can help you take action, make decisions, and achieve your goals, but just looking at it through the lens of your fears. So fear setting can help you take action, make decisions, and achieve your goals, just looking at it through a different lens, through the lens of your fears. I think it's also good to remember that anything we do that significantly changes how we go about our day to day lives will probably come with a good bit of fear.

Lynn Grogan [00:01:50]:
So if you're considering changes and feeling scared, that is normal, like, nothing has gone wrong. Feeling fear doesn't mean that you're making the wrong decision. It can seem like that sometime, but it just means that you're a little or a lot afraid, and the way through it is to address the fears and consider different ways of addressing them. So I'm gonna take you through this fear setting framework on the podcast today. But if you're on the go, I wanna encourage you to come back to these questions later and write down your answers in a journal or a Word document. I'll have all the questions in the show notes so you can find them quite easily. But if you're just listening today, just think about your answers to the questions, but come back to these later. I also wanna encourage you to let yourself write without editing or censorship.

Lynn Grogan [00:02:38]:
So Tim Ferriss says to just word vomit on the page and write as much as you can, and I fully agree with that. You wanna spend a few minutes on each question, there's 6 of them, and it will probably take you around 10 to 20 minutes to get through these. So be sure that you set aside some time where you can really focus on answering these questions. Alright. With that, here we go. So question number 1 for fear setting. So name the change that you wanna make and then define your fears. List out everything you're worried about and consider the absolute worst, I mean, worst case scenarios that could happen if you did what you're considering.

Lynn Grogan [00:03:17]:
So with this, you're gonna wanna get really specific and aim to write out 10 to 20 things. If you run out of ideas, if you get to number 7, keep asking yourself, okay, well, what else? What else? What else might I be worried about? If it's on your mind, write it down even if it seems silly or petty or something that you shouldn't worry about at all. Just write it down. So for example, if you're thinking about quitting your job and taking a sabbatical, maybe you're worried about the loss of income or that something will happen and you won't have decent health insurance. Write these down. And if you feel resistance to doing this because you think that writing down these worst case scenarios will make you feel even worse, I want to encourage you to try anyway. When you get all of this out of your head and have a sense of your actual problems or worries, you can come up with solutions to solve for them. But left unchecked, these things have a habit of waking us up in the middle of the night or increasing our stress.

Lynn Grogan [00:04:16]:
So by getting them down on paper, we can actually analyze them and do something about them. Okay. So when you've completed your list of worst case scenarios, I want you to go back through each of them and ask yourself, on a scale of 1 to 10, how likely are these things to happen? So one is not very likely and 10 is most likely will happen. Go through and give each one a rating on a scale of 1 to 10. So you might be surprised to see that some of your biggest concerns aren't even blipping in your mind as something that's likely to happen. Maybe it's, like, a 3 out of 10. So go through and rate all of those. Alright.

Lynn Grogan [00:04:56]:
Moving on to question number 2. What are all the ways you could prevent these things, these worst case scenarios from happening? How might you reduce your risks? So chances are there lots of things that you could do to reduce or eliminate risks with some preplanning. So if you are quitting to take a sabbatical and you're worried about money, maybe you give yourself enough time, enough of a runway to have solid emergency fund before you quit. You could also be reviewing your budget and reducing expenses, or maybe you're meeting with a financial adviser to get an outside opinion. Or if you're worried about health insurance, you could check into your options to extend your current health insurance or do some research to find independent plans. Additionally, if you're just worried about things that could come up that you didn't even consider just because you've never done this before, you could also seek out people who've gone before you and ask what challenges they faced and how they handled them. I bet you could get really creative here and come up with a lot of ways to prevent or reduce the risk on most of your worst case scenarios. So on to question 3.

Lynn Grogan [00:06:02]:
List out all the ways you could repair the situation if the worst actually happened. Because let's be honest, things could happen that are out of your control. We can't prevent everything, but we must remember that we are resilient species and we're adept at solving problems. So how would you repair things if you did run out of money? What are all the ways that you might secure income? If you ran into issues, who do you know that you could ask for help? So, additionally, Tim Ferris asked another great question that can help ease some of your anxiety. He says, has anyone in the history of time less intelligent, less driven, or less resource than you figured this out. So chances are very, very likely that someone has had an issue you're worried about, and they've had to solve for it. And you can probably find lots of evidence for it online. So again, question 3, what are all the ways you could repair the situation if the worst case scenario actually happened? Now on to question number 4, we want to look at the best case scenarios and start to consider all the potential benefits of taking action.

Lynn Grogan [00:07:13]:
So what are the outcomes? What are the benefits, both temporary and permanent of the more probable scenarios if you do take action? So some of these could be internal benefits, like maybe you do the thing and you gain confidence, knowledge, self esteem, fulfillment, or it could be more, like, external benefits. Maybe you have an increase in money. Maybe you have more freedom with your time, and you get to spend the time that you have in ways that you really wanna spend it. Maybe you cultivate stronger relationships with friends and family. So really, really consider what could go well if you take the actions. Write out all of the positive benefits you can imagine of succeeding or even partially succeeding in what you're attempting. Aim to write out as many best case scenarios as you did worst case scenarios above. And when you've completed your list here, I want you to go back through and ask yourself, okay, for the best case scenarios on a scale of 1 to 10, how impactful will these things be on my life if they do happen? So 1, not very impactful.

Lynn Grogan [00:08:21]:
10, permanently life altering. Do not skip this step. It's really important that you get to see a difference these things could have on your life if you take the leap. Alright. So question number 5. Now we want to consider the consequence of inaction. What is the opportunity cost if you don't do what you're considering? What might it cost you financially, emotionally, and physically to postpone action? Again, it might be something internal. In 3, 6, 12 months, you might feel regretful or disappointed that you didn't do the thing.

Lynn Grogan [00:08:57]:
You might feel envy if someone else pursues your idea before you even succeed. You might even continue to feel stressed or burned out if you keep doing what you're doing right now, or the things could be external. Maybe you miss out on having better relationships. Maybe you miss out on having freedom around your time and money. So really consider here, what will not pursuing this opportunity cost you? And you wanna answer this question both for short term costs, say over the next few months, and long term costs that could happen over a span of years. Because there is a cost to maintaining status quo and not taking action. And it's something that impacts you long term. If you have a hard time with this question, you may find it helpful to reflect back on other times in your life that you have successfully taken chances, and then consider what the benefits were of that over time.

Lynn Grogan [00:09:50]:
And finally, question number 6. What is the very next step you could take on your journey forward? So taking even the smallest step will get the ball rolling, and it doesn't have to be grandiose. Your next step could just be simply answering these questions or discussing your idea with a friend and family. Bonus points if you discuss your answers to these questions with those people. So those are the fear setting questions. And just to recap, I'll go through these quickly. Here's what you're gonna do when you sit down with your journal. Number 1, write down the change you plan to make and list out the worst possible outcomes.

Lynn Grogan [00:10:29]:
Question 2, identify actions you could take to mitigate the risks or prevent those situations from happening. Question number 3, list some steps or actions you might take to repair what happened if the worst case scenario actually occurred. Question number 4, what are some benefits of an attempt or partial success if you do move forward? Number 5, what is the cost of inaction in the next 3 months, 12 months, or even a few years? And 6, what is the very next step forward that you could take? Alright, my friend. Take 10, 20 minutes to journal on this over the next week. And let me know how it goes. I love to hear from you. So you can reach out to me on Instagram at lynn grogan or you can email me lynn@lynngrogan.com, and let me know how this goes for you. So thank you again for listening.

Lynn Grogan [00:11:22]:
If you enjoyed this episode of the Courageously Unconventional podcast, please subscribe, leave a review, or share it with a friend. And if you want some additional support, I am a life coach and I offer 1 on 1 life coaching packages. You can find details on lynngrogan.com or there'll also be a link in the show notes. Alright. So this has been the courageously unconventional podcast. I'm Lynn Grogan. See you next time.