Fear Setting


Ah anxiety, isn’t it wonderful? The stress. The pressure. The never ending barrage of things seeking our attention. The demands we expect of our selves as well our careers/jobs, families and/or friends.


Isn’t it great being busy? Ignoring things that we should be paying attention to like our health or our relationships? Those things don’t matter anyway right? That email from your boss sent during dinner time needs to be replied to right now, that’s important, not the looks from your family that don’t get your attention anymore. Or the umpteenth time you’ve had dirty takeaway this week/month/year/decade. Right? Right?


Jerry Seinfeld summed it up beautifully on the Tim Ferris podcast:


“Pain is knowledge rushing in to fill a void. You don’t know that that post of your bed was not where you thought it was, but when your foot hits it, that knowledge is going to come rushing in really fast.”


The good news is knowledge of these voids is something we can actively seek to fill, without being punched (maybe not as hard, no guarantees mate).


Enter Fear Setting, taken from Tim Ferris once more on the Fear Setting exercise from his TED talk: