Overcome Your Fear with Tim Ferriss + an audio clip to walk you through your fear

According to Tim Ferriss, fear is a driver. It drives us. It drives us from not doing the things we want. Things that are critical to our development and success.

Fear can interfere with people who are creative and entrepreneurial from taking the shots necessary in order to have their work recognized or business noticed. 

In order to create great work you must be willing to stumble. Fear is normally the driver that prevents us from taking shots and stumbling. 

Ferriss believes the way to overcome your fear is by redefining it. His definition of fear is an "irreversible negative outcome". Now this is really important to understand... fear should be defined as... "an irreversible negative outcome."

We must define fear as something that we CAN NOT turn around. Something that is permanent in existence. 

Typical what we fear is only our imagination creating worst case scenarios. It exists only inside the realm of our minds.

"People fail to reach their goals because they are poorly defined. People fail to overcome fear because it's poorly defined." - Tim Ferriss

Anytime Ferriss has been in a situation where he has been fearful, paralyzed or indecisive he resorts back to the following recipe:

1. Draw out in extreme detail all the specific worst case scenarios. Make it high definition and as real as possible. Don't spare any details.
2. Now imagine what can you do to prevent those scenarios? Write out every single possibility and scenario that you can think of to prevent that from happening.
3. Assuming the worst case scenario does came true, what can you do to reverse or minimize the damage from that scenario.

Most of the time, we're held back by fear because its a dark nebulous fantasy. Once you define your worst case scenario, you realize the worst case scenario is nearly never as bad as you imagined. We simply make it out to be terrible inside our own head.

Normally the worst case scenario means going back to a place where you had a little more stability, certainty or living below your usual standard of living for a short period of time.

Ferriss explanation of this can be found on the Chase Jarvis LIVE. Jump to 2 minutes and 45 seconds in the interview to hear Chase Jarvis ask Tim about his explanation of fear.

If you don't know who Chase Jarvis is I highly recommend you explore his show as he's had a remarkable list of guests like Macklemore and the author or Rich Dad, Poor Dad Guy Kawasaki just to name drop a couple.

Also I've created an audio clip to walk you through this exercise. I'm trying to remove any barriers you may have from not doing it.

All you need is a space to work through the exercise, a way to listen to the clip and a place to write out the answers to each part. You can use a scrap piece of paper, journal, your phone, anything will do. 

Because if there is something you fear in life, its probably a clear indication of what you must do next. The things we fear can be our greatest teachers. They contain the most valuable information and can easily become our biggest accomplishments in life.

If you have any doubt, check out Ryan Holiday's The Obstacle is the Way. The clip is below.

Subscribe to 'Your Next Chapter" to get the latest clips and podcasts or visit my website to learn more ways to create a life you love.

I can be reached on Twitter @filipsierpinski if you want to connect.

Here to see you succeed,

Filip