No Fear No More

[Vespasiano Jilg]

Theabove TED talk gives you an overview, and the below text provides more detail, step-by-step instructions, and real-world examples. For the three exercise slides from the TED presentation, please click here.

He held his breath on the final step, and the panic drove him to near unconsciousness. His vision blurred at the edges, closing to a single pinpoint of light, and then . . . he floated. The all-consuming celestial blue of the horizon hit his visual field an instant after he realized that the thermal updraft had caught him and the wings of the paraglider. Fear was behind him on the mountaintop, and thousands of feet above the resplendent green rain forest and pristine white beaches of Copacabana, Hans Keeling had seen the light.

On the other hand, he did know what bored him to tears, and he was done with it. No more passing days as the living dead, no more dinners where his colleagues compared cars, riding on the sugar high of a new BMW purchase until someone bought a more expensive Mercedes. It was over.

More than a year later, he was still getting unsolicited job offers from law firms, but by then had started Nexus Surf,5 a premier surf adventure company based in the tropical paradise of Florianopolis, Brazil. He had met his dream girl, a Carioca with caramel-colored skin named Tatiana, and spent most of his time relaxing under palm trees or treating clients to the best times of their lives.

To do or not to do? To try or not to try? Most people will vote no, whether they consider themselves brave or not. Uncertainty and the prospect of failure can be very scary noises in the shadows. Most people will choose unhappiness over uncertainty.

I had started my own company, only to realize it would be nearly impossible to sell. This turned out to be yet another self-imposed limitation and false construct. (BrainQUICKEN was acquired by a private equity firm in 2009.)

This all equated to a significant realization: There was practically no risk, only huge life-changing upside potential, and I could resume my previous course without any more effort than I was already putting forth.

That is when I made the decision to take the trip and bought a one-way ticket to Europe. I started planning my adventures and eliminating my physical and psychological baggage. None of my disasters came to pass, and my life has been a near fairy tale since. The business did better than ever, and I practically forgot about it as it financed my travels around the world in style for 15 months.

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

Sometimes timing is perfect. There are hundreds of cars circling a parking lot, and someone pulls out of a spot 10 feet from the entrance just as you reach his or her bumper. Another Christmas miracle!

He had also missed the memo. The national menu had changed, and they were out of luxuries like bread and clean water. He would be surviving for four months on a slush-like concoction of corn meal and spinach. Not what most of us would order at the movie theater.

The Tim Ferriss Show is one of the most popular podcasts in the world with more than one billion downloads. It has been selected for "Best of Apple Podcasts" three times, it is often the #1 interview podcast across all of Apple Podcasts, and it's been ranked #1 out of 400,000+ podcasts on many occasions. To listen to any of the past episodes for free, check out this page.

Side note; LOVE the blog post format here and there. Podcasts rock around the clock of course but if you work these in I am here, reading every one, and tweeting to my 50,000 followers.Every single freaking one. Fabulous.

The catch; like Hans and JM and you, ya gotta dive deeper into your fears daily. This is not a once a year thing.You may have a dramatic moment of facing down the fear of death like Hans here and there but the more sly, sneaky but hella intense fears of criticism and poverty and rejection are waiting around every corner, beckoning you to come, challenge them.

With each day, if you will just sprint toward fear, your biggest fears will reveal themselves, then, they will die a quick death. Because you see the illusion of it all. Fear is a bunch of squiggly little itty bitty energy waves in your mind. Is that something to be afraid of?

This blog post has nailed a good chunk of what I see as questions and answers everyone should have for their lives. The stories are told from a perspective of someone who KNOWS that feeling, and has really thought deeply about the experiences Then action is taken and they weave those in a positive way into their way of engaging with the world. Bravo.

It seems weird to say, but when it is presented in a short video with a step-by-step guide, I feel like it will be easier to absorb and digest than when it is surrounded by other great content in one of your books.

The funny thing is that no one ever seems to question the benefit of building the software vs the risks involved. They just assume that the risks will be overcome and the benefits will make it all worth it. Yet, for our own lives, we often take the opposite attitude.

Thank you Tim for this post. Most of all thank you for sharing your challenges with Bi Polar. This gives your advice and suggestions even more validity, the fact that you have succeeded on such a level with this condition is completely awesome. Also I feel that people are scared to admit to mental illness in a way that is different from others, so for someone with your profile to do this, can really challenge the status quo, inspire others to speak out, and get some help. Wishing you continued good health.

An admirer not a hard-core follower, but working my way up to it. Always value your inside to the Human Condition. Just learned about Stoicism from your video, which Stoic book would you recommend as the first read.

Tim, I love your 4 hr wk/wk book. I am 57, I was 13 with the pistol in my hand. I do not remember what got me to there, or why I did not finish it. But thanks for sharing. I still hurts when I think of it.

Fantastic, Tim. This is a great resource for someone like me who struggles with ego and empathy, but who has friends and family who struggle with depression. This was approachable and helpful, and funny! This is my official request for more funny Stoic stuff please ?

I like the story of Jason and the Argonauts. The Argo was an ancient ship. To sign on meant a journey of almost certain death. With no return. But these were real men, back in the day, that had confidence in their own capabilities. . but it meant certain death, with no chance of return, to sign onto that boat. In that spirit, they signed on. And the life of Ivan Denisovitch, in that spirit, you can get up in the morning.

I just wanted to say thanks for this. I watched your TED Talk when it came out but as usual procrastinated putting it to use until last July. I wanted to make the hard decision to quit my job in pursuit of a work-from-home job without already having one lined up.

I was terrified for many reasons like how would this affect my career growth? would being unemployed hurt my chances of getting another job? would I have to just settle for whatever came? but most importantly, how would I support my family if this took too long? and what is too long?

I left that coffee shop confident and ready to do what I was most afraid of at the time. I put in my notice and continued my job search. I worked hard, was turned down, offered positions below my expertise or pay range and I turned them down. This continued for over a month but I was unfazed because I had planned for it. Then finally, I got an offer that worked for me. This was a great decision, I am able to spend more time with my family and I made a positive career move.

4. I start doing research on how to possibly prevent the worst and I get stuck by too many variables that I cannot foresee (job or housing market, my own value, location dependency because of kids etc.).

A lot of times when I feared the worst case scenario, it turned out to be just small annoyances, but a lot of the times I ignored those fears or just did not have them, I got slapped pretty bad for it.

Is it always better to go for the bold move or is it sometime stupid? Maybe its an easy way out to leave your wife and children and if you define the worst case scenario for doing it, it might blind you to the actual consequences for your children, of which you have no idea of yet (all their suffering from not having a dad).

Hi Tim, your fear setting Ted talk, and related Bullet Friday message was life changing for me. Needed to make a decision that had extreme consequences, your process helped me take the risk and manage the potential consequences. Thanks for the tremendous impact on my life! long-time reader and podcast fan- Grace

I spent some time playing with fear-setting in my journal and ended up with a scary dose of clarity: the obstacles were all in my head, which leaves me with the full responsibility to take action. Oops.

I had a fight with my dad, he slapped me in a car in isolation. I rebelled. I was about to strike a hard stone on his car and break free, after all it was a stoicist vs. a stereotypical dad in his 50s, with a crumbling body.

Thanks Tim. I have just taken that leap from contentedly dying of boredom in a high paying job to feeling alive again. The cost of inaction was too high. Reading your blogs and 4 hour work week sparked a decluttering of my outlook. Life is exciting again!

And these two things have helped me a lot. I had put this video in my WatchDaily list a year back and i have been watching it for a long time and it never fails to inspire me.

Even though I have never met you in person, I still consider you as one of my best mentor and Savior who have saved me from a lot of depression episodes and gave me a new outlook about life.

Thank you Tim. I really appreciate your work a lot.

3a8082e126