Fear Setting Guide

‘Fear-setting’ is a process for defining your fears, and discovering how you can move forward from them. By helping you express what you value and what’s at stake, fear setting can help walk you through tough choices and lean into your fears, not hide from them.*Fear setting was made famous by Tim Ferriss in his TED talk about the same subject. Watch it here, or read about it here.

How's it work?

Choose a fear to work-through as you go through the following 5 stages:Define: What’s the worst that could happen?
Prevent: How can you prevent this from happening?
Repair: If the worst happens, what can you do to overcome it?
Benefits: What’s worth doing even if you fail?
Costs: What are the costs of doing nothing?

Ready to get started?

Choose a fear to work through and then follow the following steps in order, first by thinking about the question (in italics), and completing the exercise below it.Note: It can be especially helpful to write down your responses to each exercise (that way you'll have a finished project you can turn to later).

Name your fear

What am I afraid will happen?Exercise: Write down the fear you’d like worth-through. Then write down how afraid are you of taking this step, on a scale of 1-10.

Step 1: Define

What’s the worst that could happen?Exercise: List the potential worst case scenarios that could happen if you do what you fear.

Step 2: Prevent

How can I avoid this?Exercise: For every worse case scenario you have listed above, write down what you can do to prevent them from happening, or how you can minimize their occurrence.

Step 3: Repair

If the worst happens, how can I fix it?Exercise: For every worst case scenario listed above, write down what you could do to overcome the experience if it happens. Consider what you can do to fix what’s broken or how you can minimize the damages.

Step 4: Benefits

What’s worth doing even if I fail?List some of the benefits of doing what you fear. What might change in your life if you have a full or partial success?

Step 5: Costs

What are the costs of inaction?Think about the costs of staying in your current situation. Then write down what could happen if you don’t take action soon from the following time perspectives:If I do nothing, in 6 months…If I do nothing, in one year…If I do nothing, in three years…

Reflection

Now that you’ve completed the exercise, reflect on what you’ve written. Does the fear seem as scary as it did before, now that you know you can prevent or recover from the absolute worst case scenario(s)? Do the costs of inaction outweigh the benefit of not doing it? Is taking a chance on a good outcome worth the risk?…As you move forward with your fears, remember that fear is often in our heads. You’ll never know if your fears are well-founded until you face them. Until you take the chance, until you go out a see, living in fear is living in fantasy.“We suffer more in imagination than in reality.” - Seneca

Thanks

We sincerely hope this guide helped you clarify your fears and overcome them.If it helped you at all, please consider sharing. It could help someone you know.