By John Robert Marasigan

Your fears might be the perfect clue to avoid burnout.

What if your fears are the perfect feedback mechanism to figure out what matters most? What if we threw away our goal setting techniques for a moment, and set our fears instead?

We’re excellent in figuring out what’s wrong. Sometimes we might not dig deep enough which can result in creating a band-aid solution vs solving the root cause. Overall we are pretty good at picking up the clues, the signs, the vibrations when something is wrong. If data isn’t at hand, your gut and intuition can still guide you.

Fear of failure…

Fear of irrelevance…

And the fear of not being loved…

All are universal fears for nearly every human.

The problem with talking about our fears is that we don’t like to talk about it. We see it as complaining, as signs of weakness, and as being a pessimist. As a result, we become too self-critical, start living in our heads and blame the world around us. In the workplace, you’ll see managers yell at their staff (or act dismissive at best) who bring them problems and not solutions. I get that. If you’re a manager you’ve got enough on your plate. There are enough problems to fix. More problems create more fear of failure for the manager and everyone else. This can lead to increased anxiety, and when not dealt with properly it will lead to burnout. Not just for the manager, but for anyone. But how do you prevent from this anxiety spiraling out of control?

What if… you could put your fears under a microscope?

Fear is good. Nerves are good. It means you care. The biggest challenge is for any of us, no matter what your ambitions are, is to turn that fear into action. To turn your thoughts into actions. Actions that will give us a response from the real world to see if it’s helping or not helping.

One way to deal with this is by using Fear Setting instead of Goal Setting. It’s something I’ve picked up from a philosophy that’s over two thousand years old. Stoicism. People like Tim Ferriss and Ryan Holiday put the spotlight back on it not too long ago. In which they did a great job in translating it for today’s world.

“We suffer more often in imagination than in reality” — Seneca

This is just a quote in and on itself, but when you dig deeper into the actual literature you can find more insight of the letters of Seneca where he describes the exercise “Premeditatio Malorum”, which means the pre-meditation of evils. It’s simply visualizing the worst-case scenarios, that you fear, preventing you from taking action, that you actually can take action on.

How do you move from goal setting to fear setting?

Step 1 — “What if I…?

This is whatever you fear, whatever is causing you anxiety. It could be asking someone out, ending a relationship, asking for a promotion or starting your own business. It could be anything.

Define

Write down all of the worst things that can happen if you take that step. You want 10 to 20.

E.g. Tim explains he feared to take his first holiday in 4 years and go to London. Where the fear was that he might recognize he was the obstacle or that he had to shut down his company.

1. I’ll go to London. It will be rainy, I’ll get depressed. The whole thing would be a huge waste of time.
2. I’ll get a letter from the IRS, or raided or shut down.

Prevent

What could I do to prevent each of those bullets from happening, or at the very least, decrease the likelihood a little bit?

1. London — I can take a portable blue light with me and use it for 15 minutes in the morning. (I knew that helped stave off depressive episodes).
2. IRS — Change mailing address on file with the IRS so the paperwork would go to my accountant instead of my UPS address.

Repair

If the worst case scenario happened, what could you do to repair the damage, even a little bit? Or who could you ask for help?

1. London — I could fork over some money, fly to Spain, get some sun, undo the damage.
2. Missing Letter from IRS — I could call a friend who is a lawyer, or ask, a professor of law, who they recommend I should talk to, how they handled this in the past.

Has anyone else in the history of time, less driven, less intelligent have figured this out.

Step 2 — What might be the benefits of an attempt or partial success?

This sounds a bit bleak, but people often set too high expectations of outcomes, so instead of getting disappointed by reality, just ask yourself what the benefits might be of actually just attempting it, or only partial success. You might you build confidence. You might build skills, emotionally and intellectually. You might recognize it’s not such a big deal anyway.

Step 3 — The Cost of Inaction (Emotionally, physically, financially, etc)

If I avoid this action and decision, and actions and decisions like it. What would my life look like?

• 6 months
• 1 year
• 3 years

E.g. Business failed, relationships were failing, self-medicating etc.

When you write this down, you’ll quickly realize that inaction is no longer an option for you.

Some of your fears may turn out to be very well founded, but you shouldn’t make them a conclusion without first putting them under a microscope. It doesn’t make the hard times and hard choices easy, but it can make a lot of them easier.

To get you started I made a little Fear Setting Template for you for free. Feel free to copy, share, and use it for yourself.

If you liked this post please tap the 👏 button below as often as you like. And follow me on Medium — Björn Bakker.

Thanks,

Björn