Why you should define your fears instead of your goals : Tim Ferris

In the Ted talk presented to us by Tim Ferris who is an author , entrepreneur and podcaster, showed us his picture which was taken after the dance practice. He said he was happy but after a week and half later he planned to commit suicide. Ferris inherited bi-polar depression and seen a lot at his age. His life was saved by some lucky coincidence and that was the turning point. He then decided to experiment some methods to control his mood swings, self-paralysis and self-destruction which led him to stoicism. The word “Stoicism” means to endure the pain or hardship without expressing the feelings. Stoicism helped many to attain success in life and the founding fathers namely George Washington, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were the students of stoic. To avoid self- paralysis and emotional free-fall, he created an exercise which he called “fear-setting” which led him to his biggest success and decisions of life. The exercise was of three pages, on first page you have to write “what if I” in which you will mention your biggest fears or anxiety, then next to each fear or task, write the bullet points. Make three columns of “Define” , “Prevent“ and “Repair”. Define the worst case scenarios of what could happen and how you can prevent these worst case scenarios from happening and repair the damages of these scenarios. On second page answer the questions, what will be the benefits of the attempts so you can see the positive side of your fears and at last on third page write the cost of the actions you have made. In the end, he concludes his talk by saying “I encourage you to ask yourselves where in your lives right now might defining your fears be more important than defining your goals?”