#185 Fear Setting: How To Transform Apprehension Into Achievement

All right, all right, all right, everyone, this is Peter. Hope you had a great week. If you don't know what I'm talking about. Last week we talked about how to keep calm in the face of stress to help you get where you want to be. We talked about fears and how they keep you from getting your ideal life. We talked about the most common fears of investors and entrepreneurs, and then we all talked about what that fear might be keeping you from. So if you haven't listened to that episode, make sure you do that before this one. And I also talked about the modern day Stoics, which, yes, included Matthew McConaughey, which is why I gave a nod to that at the beginning of this episode. Episode this week we're going to talk about techniques and strategies to help you get past those fears. So stay tuned. Welcome to the Passive Income MD Podcast, where we talk about creating your ideal life with multiple streams of income. If you enjoy hearing about this stuff, make sure to hit subscribe. Now, let's get on with the show. Use it to your advantage. Where the people that really follow this philosophy called stoicism, there's probably a lot more to it, but the way I see it is they really focus on figuring out what they could control and in a situation versus what they couldn't. They think that most people tend to stress and worry about things that are not in their control anyways, but instead they felt like you should accept that, figure out what you can control and focus on that. Control the controllables, as some of my friends say. And if you're able to do that, you're able to think your way and work your way out of any situation and in fact use it to your advantage. These obstacles are there to help you grow, to help you progress in life to a better situation. So today we're going to talk about how to go ahead and do that. Now, the Stoics believed in doing something called premeditatio malorum. If you've been in medicine, we've all learned Latin terms before. In this case, this term means the premeditation of evils. Now, I know that doesn't sound great, but what they did was that they like to visualize the worst case scenarios to prevent or decrease the chance of those situations actually happening so you can ultimately take action. That's the goal. It means that whatever fear that you actually have, dive into it, go into it head first, think about it from an actual standpoint. What is the worst case scenario that could actually happen? Then we can figure out how do we mitigate the risk there. How do we prevent that from happening so that that fear lessens or is gone? And what will that do? That will help unlock the path forward? Now, here's an example of that. How many have actually put in a central line before? Wherever you are, raise your hand, let me know, say I, whatever it is, how many of you actually put in a central line? I'm talking about internal jugular, subclavian, whatever it is. Let's talk about that IJ for a moment. You remember the first time you put one in? As an anesthesiologist, I had to put a ton in, especially during trauma situations or for big cases. We used to do these things without ultrasound. Now I know everything's done under ultrasound. When I first learned to do it in internship and residency, we didn't use ultrasound. We used like the guided technique with wire. You know, we use a finer needle, stick it first, and then go over it with a bigger needle. Anybody remember doing that? Obviously it seems crazy now that we have ultrasound, we could do this under visualization, but that's the way we learned it. Now, what are the complications from doing something like this? I'm going to name off a few right now. Carotid artery puncture, pneumothorax, hemothorax, hematomas, air embolism, infection, arrhythmias, nerve injury. You could lose your guide wire, you could shear a catheter in there, you get Horner syndrome, you can lacerate the vessel, you can get tracheal injury. If you screw up enough, that can form fistulas and of course, the big one, death. Now, none of this sounds great. Now, I don't know how much fear you had when putting in this thing for the first time or even those of you put it in today. How many of you think about all of those complications. However, they do exist and they are real. So how do you get past that? How do you get past all that fear of those things and actually put in a central line? Well, we actually learned to do these things incrementally. We actually learned what some of those complications were. We made sure we knew what those things, what problems could arise. Then we figured out over time how to avoid those things, whether it's through ultrasound guidance. We talked about prepping the site so we don't get infections. When you put in the guide wire, you look for arrhythmias to make sure you don't go too far with that. Whether you knew it or not, you defined all of the worst case scenarios that could happen. When you put in that central line, you learned how to avoid those things and it really took away a lot of the fear and it allows you to do that procedure. For many of you, you're able to do it so quickly in the most stressful situation today, in spite of all the things and all the fear that could go wrong. Now that comes with practice. The thing is we can do that with all of the other fears that come up. Now I'm going to mention those fears again really quickly for investors and entrepreneurs. Fear of failure, fear of financial loss, losing money, fear of reputational damage, fear of opportunity cost, fear of missing out, fear of legal issues, fear of fear of overwhelm and fear of rejection. So with all those sitting on our face, how do we get over that? Well, we can do what we did with central line. We actually identify what the fears are first and we dive headfirst into it. Some people call this fear setting, some people call this fear journaling. And I would recommend doing this on paper. So I'm gonna teach that strategy of how you do this. And it starts with the three part process. Starts with defining the fear, preventing the fear and repairing the fear. So what does it mean to define the fear? I bet all of us have a question right now. What if I do? Blank, blank, blank, dot, dot, dot. We worry about what's going to happen. What if I start that business? What if I invest here? What if I drop a weekend at work? What if I change jobs? We probably have a stressful situation, fear thought that is coming up over and over again for us. So it starts with defining that. What if I then we put down a paper, all of the things that could go wrong. And I'm going to give you an example of this. Just like with the ij, all the complications, let's say you were doing informed consent on this. What if I putting all of the things that could go wrong next. The second part of the process is to prevent the fear. Now, looking at all the things that could go wrong, what could you actually do to prevent it or minimize the chances of this happening? How do you mitigate that risk? Is there something that you could do to minimize your chance, for example, of puncturing the carotid artery? The third step is to repair the fear. So if the worst case does happen, what could you do to repair things? Who could you also ask for help? If you have an inadvertent carotid artery puncture, what could you do? You could remove the needle, you could hold pressure. If you're a Resident, you could call an attending for help. That's the major three part process. We're going to go through that now. I like to add steps four and five, which is you think about the benefit and cost. Why am I doing this? What can you actually gain from taking action? If it's investing or starting a business, what are the benefits of that? What could it give you? It's important to know why you're doing something. In the fifth step, you think about this question, what is the cost of inaction? I've talked about it before. We're all very good at figuring out if you do something, what are the downsides and what are the consequences. That's part of what this fear of journaling is all about. But how many of us think, what if you don't take action because there are consequences too? You make an action every time you decide to do something or not decide to do something. Both are decisions. So if you decide not to do something, take that job, reduce your time, invest, start that business, maybe decide not to do those things. What are consequences to your life of not doing those things? What situation are you going to be in six months from now, three years from now, five years from now? If you decide to do nothing, Will you be in the same place? Better or worse? You've lost time. Now, would it have been better for you to just try? So it's important to talk about the cost of inaction. So for me, I'll go through a quick scenario. And this happened to me when I was thinking about cutting back my shifts. I started to create income outside of medicine through real estate, passive investments. I started to make money from this enough that it would cover and replace some of my shifts at work. And I'm an OB anesthesiologist and I get paid for the time I'm there. At that time, I was working six nights in house every single month. And I was also working three out of four weekends. There were other people that were willing to pick up shifts, but I was scared to do that even if I had the money coming in. So here's what I had to think through. What if I give up a few shifts a month? And there was a lot of fear behind that. And I remember being at a Tony Robbins conference and there was something very similar to this whole fear setting. So I didn't do exactly what I talk about today, but very, very similar. And I had the same thought process and I got a chance to really think through this fear. So the first step would be to define what if I Give up two shifts a month. What was my worst fear or consequence? Number one is that I would have less money. It's like you're giving up a shift. No one likes the idea of giving up money. Maybe worst case scenario, I'd be short in the month. I wouldn't have enough money to pay the bills. I wouldn't have enough money to save up for retirement. I. Maybe my wife would be unhappy. She makes money too. Maybe she wouldn't like the fact that I'm taking time off. Maybe the people at work wouldn't be happy that I did that. Maybe if I asked people at my job that I would be able to do that. Maybe they wouldn't like me working there. Maybe I'd lose my job. These are all big things that go around in your head. This is not exhaustive list. But just for example, it would even go down to maybe I can't make my house payments. Maybe I'd have to move, maybe I'd have to lose my house. These are all things that swim around people's minds. The crazy consequences. But define I put all those down on paper. The next step is to prevent. What actions could I take to prevent these from happening? In this case, maybe I could make sure the income that was coming in would totally replace the money that I would lose from these shifts so I wouldn't be in a bad financial position. Maybe I should get clarity on exactly how much money is coming in and what I can expect. I could talk to my wife to make sure she was okay with it for some of the volatility that might happen if I didn't have that steady paycheck. But I'd be relying more on other income outside of medicine. I could talk to people at work, my chief, make sure he was okay with it. I could look at my budget and get clarity on what my true expenses were to make sure I had a nice buffer so I wouldn't lose my home, wouldn't be able to not make house payments. Maybe I could just drop one shift at a time to make sure it worked okay and when I wouldn't run into trouble. So that's all about preventing. The next step is to repair. What if the worst case scenario does happen? What could you do to fix things now? What if I ran into money issues because I went down on shifts? Well, could I just continue to work more now? Giving up shifts wouldn't be permanent. I could just continue to work and not give it up to other people if I needed to. I couldn't moonlight. I mean, if I need to. I could pick up additional shifts on top of that if I needed to. I could also look for other ways to create income streams if worse came to worse. I had other investments if I needed to add properties that I could pull money from or I could sell if worst case scenario. So I was able to define, prevent and repair. It made me feel comfortable, right. It gave me some clarity around some of the things that could go wrong. And I honestly began to feel like, what is the downside? I could always go back. I could always pick up more shifts. The downside didn't seem so bad. And so I started thinking about the benefits of taking action. I'll be able to get to spend more time with my family. I'd have more free time. I'd feel like a million bucks if I had the weekend off. I could travel more. I could look into other ventures more, spend more time with my wife and kids. And quality time. I'd be less stressed out and burnt out at work. Potentially sounded like some amazing benefits. I'd be able to create more income streams to create more freedom from medicine. And then I thought about the other side, the cost of inaction. What if I did not take action? I didn't try to reduce my shift time, Number one, I'd still be grinding away. I wouldn't know if the incomes that I was making outside of medicine, it could actually change my life. It might keep me more reliant or still reliant on my medical income, not knowing if I could actually do something in terms of working less and enjoying my time. I'd be missing out on family events. I'd be missing out on holidays. I was working a ton of holidays. That might negatively impact my relationship with my kids and my family and my wife. So when I took all these things into account, it made it very clear that I could reduce my time and still be okay with the worst case scenario. In fact, the upside or the benefit was so great that I felt compelled to do it. And so that's what, that's what I did. Immediately after doing so, I decided to cut down my shifts. It was scary. There's no doubt there was fear there. But now I had a clear idea of the fear and the risk involved. So I started dropping one shift, then two shifts, and next thing you know, I got to drop all my nights and weekends. It helped push me to create more income streams to totally replace my income. It gave me the time to start new businesses. It gave me the opportunity to spend more time with my family and kids, be there with them, travel more. But I almost didn't do those things because of fear for a long time. So maybe this exercise will help you if you're in a situation like that or in another situation where fear is keeping you from moving forward. So here's a quote that I absolutely love from Seneca, one of those Roman philosophers I mentioned in the last podcast, one of the famous Stoics. He says this. We suffer more in imagination than in reality. Think about that. We suffer more in imagination than in reality. I think that's true for all of us. It's definitely true for me. But by truly addressing our fears head on, we learn what's true and what's not. So some final thoughts. Instead of running away from fear or avoiding it, why don't we try taking them head on? Try this whole fear setting or fear journaling exercise. Let's focus on controlling what we can control. Let's surround ourselves with people who think like this, find that right community of people that are moving forward, taking action. So ultimately, let's let this help us make better decisions in life, see risk for what it is, and live more fully. I'm going to leave you with this quote. Instead of denying these fears, declare them, say them out loud. Admit them, give them the credit they deserve, then find the courage to overcome them. Guess who said that? Yes, you got it. You're right. Matthew McConaughey, the famous stoic of today. I hope that was helpful. Let us know if you've done this fear setting, this fear journaling. Let us know what decisions you've come up with. I hope this has been helpful for you. It's a tool that I use often to help me move forward to take action. You folks are amazing. Have a great week and let's talk again soon. Enjoy the show. Let me know by dropping a review in the podcast app you're listening to us in. And if you haven't already, make sure to hit subscribe. Join thousands of physicians who are also on this journey to creating their ideal lives through multiple streams of income. Learn more at our website, passiveincomemd.com thanks again for allowing me to be a part of your journey. See you next time.