You should set Fears instead of Goals -- What is Fear Setting and how to do it

Distinguished Author, Podcaster and businessman Tim Ferriss started his journey towards who he is now with an attempted suicide. In an exclusive TED Talk, he revealed this truth that for the past 20 years, he had not told a single soul. I was deeply surprised as his fan that he had ever even ventured to that dark precipice of take his own life. What stopped him from pulling the shotgun trigger was pure coincidental happenings that led him to decide whether he should stay in the States or travel to London for a short while.

Now normally, our first reaction at the idea of going and staying in a country on the other side of the planet while still keeping a job or a business is the thought of Absurdity. "It's not even possible!!" and most conversation stopped at that. Without anymore thought.. To be fair, I too had many of such arresting thoughts and too have cried "impossible!" and many opportunities thrown my way.

The last time such opportunities come at me and I handled it differently was July 2017, It had changed my life.

It was when I stumbled on @Roelandp's announcement of Steemfest2. The second iteration of the event that got me falling in love with the Steem Blockchain. After all, if there was no Steemfest, there won't be a Cointelegraph article that got my attention to the Steem Blockchain.

The Cointelegraph article that got me exposed - and fall in love with, The Steem Blockchain

You see, the announcement of a crypto/blogger's conference in Portugal happens at a time when my passport had only a single In/Out stamp. One from Malaysia to Singapore and back, a literally 40 minute plane flight for me. I had no traveling experience save for the familiar shores of South East Asia.

A plane ticket from Miri to Lisbon costs about 2 months of my professional salary. It would never have been a possibility had I not made the mental exercise of fear setting. Along with the subsequent discovery of some other fortunate event.

This exercise, founded on the roots of stoicism, has helped many people change their lives for the better. It was, according to Tim Ferriss, the mental exercise that change his live and led him to his publishing of the book "The 4 hour work week", the best seller that changed the ambition of half an entire generation (the other half wants to be either insta-famous and Youtubers but lets not talk about them).

Often times, we as individual often times already have all the requirement we thought we must first need to accomplish big things for ourselves. I budgeted an expense of $1800 (at the time my salary was less than $400 per month) for the trip. I thought was impossible at first.

So what is fear setting?

Before undertaking a feat where you feel initially overwhelmed, fear setting can put things into pespective. Seneca The Younger, famous Roman poet and stoic famously said that "We suffer more in imagination than in reality". We think and think so much about the worst that we fail to see things in the bigger picture.

Fear setting is an exercise where you can set down those fears - the "what ifs", and come up with solutions.

What we do is list down 3 columns, titled "What if", "Prevention" and "repair".

So first list down all the fears you may have about something, and write down the worst thing you think can happen if you do it.. In my case, Going to Steemfest2, One big fear for me was the spending.. and of course being stuck in airpots and never made it to Lisbon in the first place. So i write them down.

And then I start to look at those fears as problems, problems that has not happened yet and so can be prevented. What are the things i can do to prevent my fears? For example say my fear of not having enough money, Well budgeting helps.. And so i squeeze as much as I can as necessity budget, since the remaining will be used as "emergency fund" for margin of error. As for my fear of missing flights.. What i can do is of course, buy airlines and connection that are far in between, no chance of missing unless something bad happens right?

And of course, with fear setting, we prepare for the eventually that it did happen. What can be done if the worst really did happen? What can be done if i really run out of money in Portugal? Well... I have some Steem that I've powered down earlier that i can sell to Steemians who would want to help me out (I'm sure there will Steemians who will help me out, that i do not fear). So we write it down too.

And eventually you'd exhaust all the fears from your mind to the paper..

Then, you take another piece of paper titled "What are the benefit of an attempt or a partial success". You can see that we go all out on the negative but be conservative on the positives. So say if I attempted to fly to Portugal and attempted to attend Steemfest.. How would i potentially grow? what things will I learn? what skills would i learn?

And then on the final piece of paper, title it as "The Price of Status Quo". What happens if I dont do it. and separate it to 3 columns titled "short(3-6 month)", "medium(1 year)", and "long term(3 years).

Humans are good at considering what MIGHT go wrong, "what if i quit my job", "what if i ask him/her out".. But ussually fail to consider the damning price of inaction. Not changing anything.

So say if I ask myself "what if i don't go to Steemfest2, how would my life play out, what might i miss out on". How would i feel emotionally or financially or even physically in 6 months, a year, 3 years.. and be really really detailed on it.

And what i found was the huge hidden cost of not attending it. I am at a point of being miserable to the idea of being tethered to a wage, I realize i have not seen so much of the world, I know that i will be missing out on a part of history. And so after all was done i concluded that i am risking a short term pain and inconvenience for long term gain and growth..

And so I attended.. I get to see awesome people from all across the globe, I get to meet with @ned himself, got my mind blown by hearing in on a discussion by @anyx and @lukestokes, @furion on another occasion and the witnesses/really-smart-people I talked with. I socialize with more people in a day than i did in 2 years. Finally put a face on many Steemians that i can now finally consider as friends, I get to see one of the oldest city in the world of which its culture has affected the history of my country.

_{Ugly fanboy meets his IRL idol, Ned's hair}

Attending Steemfest changed my life. And it would have never happened had i thought "Nah it's not possible".

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