The difficult choices in life — what we most fear doing, asking, saying — to a large extent, are exactly what we need to do. How can we overcome self-paralysis? American author, and entrepreneur, Tim Ferriss, starts off by explaining how, as a youngster, he decided to commit suicide and had it all planned out. A few lucky coincidences prevented him from going headlong into the plan. However, what scared him the most was the “element of chance”. Ever since, he became methodical about testing different ways of handling ups and downs.
He stresses the importance of differentiating between what you can control, what you cannot, and doing exercises to achieve the former. One way to do this is to visualise the worst-case scenario that you fear, that prevents you from taking action, so that you can in fact, take action. This can be done by a process called fear-setting where you envision and write down your fears in detail — define a worst-case scenario, list ways to prevent it or, if the damage has been done, list ways to repair it. Next, write down what could be the benefits of an attempt or partial success. Finally, examine the cost of inaction .
Ferriss concludes by saying that some fears might be well-founded, but they have to nonetheless, go under the microscope. Doing so may not make all hard choices easy, but it might definitely make them easier.
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