The setting sun reflects off the surface of the water, providing a Zen-like setting for a message he knows is true: It’s not giving up to put your current path on indefinite pause. Waiting for the swell, the true emotions come out: “God, I wish I could do what you do.” His reply is always the same: “You can.” These days, he often sees his former self in the underjoyed and overworked professionals he takes out on the waves. 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. 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 always been terrified of plane turbulence as if he might die with the best inside of him, but now he could fly through a violent storm sleeping like a baby. Immediately, a strange shift began-Hans felt, for the first time in a long time, at peace with himself and what he was doing. 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. On the other hand, he did know what bored him to tears, and he was done with it. Hans didn’t know exactly what he wanted, but he had tasted it. He was an attorney on his way to the top-what the hell did he want? His colleagues told him what he expected to hear: He was throwing it all away. He had realized something while arcing in slow circles toward the earth-risks weren’t that scary once you took them. We all make these promises to ourselves, and Hans had done it before as well, but things were now somehow different. Strike number three came the day before he left for his Brazilian vacation. That same morning, he had made himself a promise: two more times and I’m out of here. He had once slept under his desk at the office after a punishing half-done project, only to wake up and continue on it the next morning. For nearly five years, he had faced his alarm clock with the same dread: I have to do this for another 40–45 years? On Monday, Hans returned to his law office in Century City, Los Angeles’s posh corporate haven, and promptly handed in his three-week notice. 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. 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. His vision blurred at the edges, closing to a single pinpoint of light, and then. He held his breath on the final step, and the panic drove him to near unconsciousness. His sneakers gripped firmly on the jagged rock, and he drove his chest forward toward 3,000 feet of nothing. “Run! Ruuuuuuuuuun!” Hans didn’t speak Portuguese, but the meaning was clear enough-haul ass. “Named must your fear be before banish it you can.” “Many a false step was made by standing still.” For the three exercise slides from the TED presentation, please click here. The above TED talk gives you an overview, and the below text provides more detail, step-by-step instructions, and real-world examples. It is the most powerful exercise I do.įear-setting has produced my biggest business and personal successes, as well as repeatedly helped me to avoid catastrophic mistakes. I do an exercise called “fear-setting” at least once a quarter, often once a month.
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