THERE IS NOTHING TO FEAR BUT FEAR ITSELF

Maybe you are facing a difficult conversation you’ve been putting off for months. Or you’re about to embark on a new project that tests you to your limits. Or it could be a job change, moving to a new city, starting a relationship—any of those can provoke fears and anxieties that pin you down and you can suddenly feel trapped before the situation even unfolds.  

It is a timeless truth that many of the things we worry about never come to happen. But our imaginary fears can have real consequences. Fear will cloud your reality, and like other extreme emotions such as anger, will cloud your vision and obscure what is going on. The grips of fear can be paralyzing.

How do you take back control? How do you go back to your effective self ready to face whatever challenge comes next?

First, you must begin with one of the most important practices in the Stoic Philosophy, 

The Premeditation of Evils

“Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action.”

What is the worst that can go wrong…the absolute worst? Study that. Feel it in your bones and skin. Understand what it will look and taste like. Good. Now you’ve removed the surprise and some of the fear. You’ve readied yourself for the worst.

On a scale of 1-10 define what is the most negative outcome of that situation and the positive outcome or the probable outcome. If the Positive scale is more than the negative scale, that's when you know your fears are groundless because the worst possible outcome is still not bad enough for the probable positive outcome.

As Seneca put it best,

“the man who has anticipated the coming of troubles takes away their power when they arrive.”

Now comes preparation:

“There’s no difference between a pessimist who says, ‘Oh, it’s hopeless, so don’t bother doing anything,’ and an optimist who says, ‘Don’t bother doing anything, it’s going to turn out fine anyway.’ Either way, nothing happens.”

Fear comes in many forms, and we usually don’t call it by its four-letter name. Fear itself is quite fear-inducing. Most intelligent people in the world dress it up as something else: optimistic denial.

Most who avoid quitting their jobs entertain the thought that their course will improve with time or increases in income. This seems valid and is a tempting hallucination when a job is boring or uninspiring instead of pure hell. Pure hell forces action, but anything less can be endured with enough clever rationalization.

Do you think it will improve or is it wishful thinking and an excuse for inaction? If you were confident in improvement, would you be questioning things so? Generally not. This is fear of the unknown disguised as optimism.

Are you better off than you were one year ago, one month ago, or one week ago?

If not, things will not improve by themselves. If you are kidding yourself, it is time to stop and plan for a jump.

It’s probably time to cut your losses. Its time you face your fears and be better.

What can do you do to prepare yourself? What options do you have when the worst case happens? How can you prevent it from happening? What can you do today to reduce the chances of the worst happening? If it does happen, how can you bounce back? Write it all down on paper and think it through.

Next, you must embrace the practice.

Think of Cato, one of our most preeminent stoics, would walk around barefoot and with minimal clothing, in heat and cold. Why? He was training himself for a life in which he might have to experience poverty. He was, of course, a Roman aristocrat; he’d probably never become penniless. But he didn’t want to fear it at all, so he lived, in brief increments, a penniless life. And that simple exercise gave him an uncommon strength—the ability to have experienced and prepared for and thought about trouble robbed that trouble of all its power over him.

Soldiers know how to shoot to kill—so why do they train for being on the receiving end of gunfire? The same reason a company does “war gaming” against its competitors. The same reason football players practice fumble recovery and give reps to their backup quarterback. When you can study and learn from what has failed in the past, or prepare for what might fail in the future, you reduce your fear.

Firefighters train night and day to enter burning buildings. Police officers shoot hundreds of rounds at firing ranges to make sure they are ready when the crisis happens. Special operators around the country train for hostage rescue situations, playing out over and over again the remotest possibility of an adversary capturing one of our own.

Preparing for what may come is how you know, entering a situation fraught with uncertainty and chaos, that you are ready. That you have done your best preparing. This is how you take control of your fear.  

Think of practice as immunity: Immunity to fear; immunity to weakness; immunity to your sense of doubt and hesitation. Practice even what you think you can’t do, and you might find that you have more capacity than you considered possible.

This is a blueprint that you require to take control over fear:

If you are nervous about making the jump or simply putting it off out of fear of the unknown, here is your antidote. Write down your answers, and keep in mind that thinking a lot will not prove as fruitful or as prolific as simply brain vomiting on the page. Write and do not edit—aim for volume. Spend a few minutes on each answer.

1. Define your nightmare, the absolute worst that could happen if you did what you are considering. What doubt, fears, and “what-ifs” pop up as you consider the big changes you can—or need—to make? Envision them in painstaking detail. Would it be the end of your life? What would be the permanent impact, if any, on a scale of 1–10? Are these things permanent? How likely do you think it is that they would happen?

2. What steps could you take to repair the damage or get things back on the upswing, even if temporarily? Chances are, it’s easier than you imagine. How could you get things back under control?

3. What are the outcomes or benefits, both temporary and permanent, of more probable scenarios? Now that you’ve defined the nightmare, what are the more probable or definite positive outcomes, whether internal (confidence, self-esteem, etc.) or external? What would the impact of these more likely outcomes be on a scale of 1–10? How likely is it that you could produce at least a moderately good outcome? Have less intelligent people done this before and pulled it off?

4. What are you putting off out of fear? Usually, what we most fear doing is what we most need to do. That phone call, that conversation, whatever the action might be—it is fear of unknown outcomes that prevents us from doing what we need to do. Define the worst case, accept it, and do it. I’ll repeat something you might consider tattooing on your forehead: What we fear doing most is usually what we most need to do. As I have heard said, a person’s success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have. Resolve to do one thing every day that you fear. I got into this habit by attempting to contact celebrities and famous business people for advice.

5. What is it costing you—financially, emotionally, and physically—to postpone action? Don’t only evaluate the potential downside of action. It is equally important to measure the atrocious cost of inaction. If you don’t pursue those things that excite you, where will you be in one year, five years, and ten years? How will you feel having allowed circumstance to impose itself upon you and having allowed ten more years of your finite life to pass doing what you know will not fulfil you? If you telescope out 10 years and know with 100% certainty that it is a path of disappointment and regret, and if we define risk as “the likelihood of an irreversible negative outcome,” inaction is the greatest risk of all.

To assist you in the process of conquering fear I have designed a template for you that will help you get going with the questions above, this exercise is called fear setting, you can use the template here.

What are you waiting for? If you cannot answer this without resorting to the previously rejected concept of good timing, the answer is simple: You’re afraid, just like the rest of the world. Measure the cost of inaction, realize the unlikelihood and repairability of most missteps, and develop the most important habit of those who excel and enjoy doing so: action.

In conclusion, you’ve probably heard the “nothing to fear but fear itself”, but the full line is worth reading because it applies to many difficult things we face in life: “Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself— nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” Fear is to be feared because of the miseries it creates. The things we fear pale in comparison to the damage we do to ourselves and others when we unthinkingly scramble to avoid them. An economic depression is bad; a panic is worse. A tough situation isn’t helped by terror— it only makes things harder.

And that’s why we must resist it and reject it if we wish to turn this situation around because we suffer more in imagination than we ever can in reality.