How I Fight My Anxiety Using Tim Ferriss’ Fear-Setting Technique
What three words have meant for my mental health and success
Recently, I had the opportunity to speak to a group of 30+ college students who are a part of the Active Minds chapter at Auburn University. My topic was handling stress and burnout as a college student, and I was blessed to have been able to talk about a tool that has helped me evolve in ridiculous amounts as a person, creator, and mental health proponent.
In his TED talk, Tim Ferriss describes his own tactic for cognitively reframing his biggest fears and worries. In the talk appropriately titled “Why you should define your fears instead of your goals”, he explains a three-step journaling system to get past your biggest anxieties.
So, what is fear-setting?
In order to do fear-setting, all you need is a piece of paper. Divide it into three columns, and you’re ready to get started. This can also be done on a laptop or in your head, but I prefer a good old paper journal moment. Plus, they’re fun to look back at and see how you processed your fears at different points in time.
I still look back at a journal from my sophomore year of high school and see all of these fears I worked through in the weeks before a speech and debate tournament. It’s powerful now to see how much I was able to process and work through in a time that was absolutely terrifying for fifteen-year-old me.
#1: Define
The first step of this cognitive reframing practice is to define your fears. Put the pen to the page and say what it is that you’re actually scared of. Oftentimes, many of my fears don’t even warrant the next two steps of this exercise because once I define them, their intimidation factor fades away.
For this exercise, I listed out specific worries that I have, but also some that can be fairly generalized. Whether or not these are fears you’ve specifically encountered, you can probably understand their sentiment. The purpose of this step is to simply put into words what’s been stirring around in your head.
These definitions can be as long or as short as you want. Make the process your own. For me, they usually follow the above format, and may even have little subpoints and related fears that make a certain worry more consequential in my life for whatever reason.
#2: Prevent
The second step of this process is to “prevent” your fears from coming true, Essentially what this is all about is remembering your agency as a person and making a plan to prevent the fear from occurring. This is, again, a place where many fears fall away and show their losing cards, becoming much less daunting.
Interestingly enough, this is a place where you can also realize that your fears might be inevitable, or probable, and learn to deal with that fact. With my grades and my endurance in any sort of application process, it is unlikely that I’ll be able to pursue a graduate degree at Harvard or Georgetown. But that doesn’t mean my efforts couldn’t get me closer to making that happen,
In my Active Minds presentation a few weeks ago, one of the fears an audience member had called out was “Having conflict with friends”. When we made it to the prevent column for that fear, I simply looked at the crowd and said “that’s not preventable.” No matter what, some fears are going to happen or hurt us in some unavoidable way.
That doesn’t mean, though, that you can’t plan against it. Some things are bound to happen in your life. If your fears are not necessarily preventable or not in your control, list ways to mitigate their impact and lessen the effect they’ll have on your life.
#3: Repair
During this final step, you imagine that all of your fears have come true. You place yourself in the horrific situation that you’ve been imagining and fearing and figure out what your next steps will be. To be honest, most of the time, when I get to this step, I realize that my fears either aren’t all that likely barring some crazy turn of events or that they would be easy to recover from.
Not to mention, most of the things we fear the most are the things we need to happen in our life to push us forwards. Even though we might fear these situations, getting fired, being broken up with, and facing loss can sometimes help us to grow and become more grateful for the life we have. In addition to that, these situations are recoverable — we can come back, be resilient, and live life better after such tragedies. Or maybe, we’ll realize that our fears are silly and we should stop worrying so much.
Why would you use this tool?
Tim Ferriss is a man who’s been through the wringer. He knows what anxiety is and how to overcome it from personal experience, and describes his practice of “fear-setting” as a “recipe for avoiding self-destruction and certainly self-paralysis”.
Not only does it work, and is recommended by a man who knows what he’s talking about, having both practiced this journaling habit and interviewed hundreds of high-performing individuals, but it’s based on psychology.
When someone is anxious and worried about the outcomes of a situation, they get a sort of tunnel vision and confirmation bias, seeing only the things that insinuate their fears are correct and coming true. The practice of fear-setting allows an individual to step out of the situation and ask — “what am I really worried about here?” It also allows that person to get perspective, putting words to otherwise ambiguous fear and seeing that the worst-case scenario is, at worst, bearable.
I hope this is a tool that you can use — or at least a thought process you can apply to your more anxious moments. It has certainly changed my life and pointed me in the direction of powerful cognitive reframing statements and tools. Best of luck!
Kindly, Katie
Read more from me here: 7 Things The Richest of the Rich Always Make The Time To Do
