Keep a Record of Your Fears: Change the Conversation.
When you keep a record of your fears, each new fear meets evidence. The feeling may not vanish. But you can ask how fears of its kind turned out before.
A score changes the conversation.
A score won't make the feeling disappear, and chapter 10 explains why fear returns. Instead, a score changes the conversation you have with the feeling. Without a record, every new fear walks in with full authority. So you have nothing to compare it with.
Asking each fear what kind it is.
Here is how to question your fears: ask what kind each one is. For example, maybe your money fears came true one time in three. Meanwhile, your fears of being laughed at never came true once. Then they deserve very different attention, even at three in the morning. That only works if you keep a record of your fears.
Why you keep a record of your fears.
An unexamined fear, repeated often, gradually acquires the authority of a fact. That is when fear feels like fact. Therefore, the most reliable fix is to compare prediction with outcome. Also, the habit is not courage or calm, just a column of results. You learn it from your own life instead of from a poster.
Keep a record of your fears by type.
Sort your scored fears into groups, such as money and being laughed at.
Count how often each group came true and write the ratio beside it.
From the book.
That is the habit this chapter is trying to give you. Not courage, not calm, just a column of results. Over time you'll learn which of your fears are good forecasters and which ones are just noise, and you'll learn it from your own life instead of from a poster.
I Want to Start a Business but I'm a Coward, chapter 4: Nobody checked your fear's record
Questions about keep a record of your fears.
Why keep a record of your fears if the feeling returns?
Because the record changes how you answer the feeling. You can check how similar fears turned out.
Can the research prove my fears are wrong?
No. It cannot guarantee your particular fears are wrong, but it shows how to test them.
Where does the book explain why fear comes back?
Chapter 10 explains why fear tends to come back even after you face it.
Read the whole chapter.
This lesson covers one section of chapter 4, “Nobody checked your fear's record”. The book goes further, with the full evidence, the stories and every exercise.
Lessons in this chapter.
- 01 Fear Is a Prediction: Why Your Fears Need Checking.
- 02 85 Percent of Worries Never Happen: The Real Source.
- 03 91 percent of worries do not come true: The Study.
- 04 Review Old Worries Exercise: Score Three Past Fears.
- 05 Hindsight Bias: Why Memory Cannot Judge Old Fears.
- 06 Keep a Record of Your Fears: Change the Conversation.
- 07 Defensive Pessimism: When Worry Does a Real Job.
- 08 Start a Worry Log: Fix Six Common Scoring Traps.