Fear Setting for Stress Reduction
Fear setting is an amazing tool that can be used to get over almost any kind of fear or doubt in your mind. Most often it is prescribed by self-help gurus and productivity experts who recommend it as a means to get over fears of taking chances. For instance, if you are someone who is thinking about branching out and starting their own business, you might find that fears of failure are holding you back. This is where fear setting would normally come in, to help you overcome those doubts and take a real chance on your future and on your dreams.
But fear setting has other uses too. Specifically, it can be a highly powerful tool for overcoming doubts and fears that might be causing you stress. If you’re afraid of losing your job, of your relationship ending, or of your credit score becoming so bad that you can’t get a loan… this can cause you underlying chronic stress.
The solution? Fear setting, in order to remove those doubts and focus on what matters.
How to Use Fear Setting
The idea behind fear setting is that you are going to write down all the things you find are making you feel stressed. Then, you will look at them and assess on a case-by-case basis, whether they’re really worth stressing about. Are they actually likely to cause you problems, or are you worrying for nothing?
For instance, if you look at what it is you’re stressed about in your relationship, then you’ll probably find there are some underlying fears there: the big one normally being that your partner will leave you. If you’re stressed about work, then it often boils down to a fear that you might lose your job.
Write down these fears then and then rate them each on a scale of 1-10 for their likeliness. And think about each point. How likely are you really to lose your job? Bearing in mind it’s actually illegal to fire someone without a good reason? Would your partner of 5 years really leave you over one argument?
Likewise, come up with a contingency plan for each fear. What would you do if you lost your job? Worst case scenario it might mean moving back in with your parents, but probably you’d find something else faster than that.
The moral of the story? Most of our fears are inflated in our minds. Once we learn this, they become much more manageable!
