What could possibly go wrong?

There’s a fair chance that even after reading everything over the past few days, you may be reluctant to take action. If you are, it’s worth trying something called ‘Fear Setting’.

This is a concept that comes from Tim Ferriss and his book The Four Hour Workweek.

So what is fear setting?

Essentially, this is a tool that you use to overcome your fears by facing them and coming up with strategies to deal with worst case scenarios.

Let’s say you’re thinking of becoming a self-employed, online entrepreneur. It sounds great in theory but you’re afraid to do it.

Here’s why:

• You might fail and be humiliated
• You don’t have any funding for your idea
• You might end up homeless and alone

So those are some fears and worst case scenarios.

Now what you’re going to do is to go through each of those points and a) score them out of ten in terms of likelihood then b) write down how you would cope in each situation.

• You might fail and be humiliated – 7/10
• You don’t have any funding for your idea – 10/10
• You might end up homeless and alone – 1/10

Now look at how you’ll cope with any of these things happening, and how you’re going to mitigate the risk thereby making it even less likely to happen.

You might fail and be humiliated. You actually don’t need to tell anyone that you’re trying.
You don’t have any funding for your idea. You can try crowdfunding on Kickstarter.
You might end up homeless and alone. Crash on a friend’s couch until you can get something sorted.

The point is: The worst case scenario is not normally as bad as you think it is and there are almost always ways you can cope.

Anyway, what’s more frightening: Those things happening and you living a full and interesting life? Or you remaining in a job you find soul destroying and boring for your whole life?

Talk soon!