The past few weeks I’ve done a lot of thinking about facing fear and failure. I tried out a couple of fear setting practices and shared my thoughts here.

Since each specific post goes into far more detail, I’m just going to give a brief synopsis for each. I’ll share links to each prior post for quick access.

Facing Personal Fear – Going Bald

A longtime fear I’ve had is the fear of going bald. While it may not seem to be significant, it’s something that has bothered me. After a brief moment of hesitation, I decided it was time to see what all the fuss was about.

I buzzed my hair down until I can see the light reflecting from the top of head. I soon set out a picture, and was surprised by the positive feedback I had gotten. Not only was the fear I had internalized not real, it turned out to be the opposite.

Facing Social Fear – Coffee Challenge

Once I had dealt with some of the personal fears I had kept for so long, I wanted to try a different angle. This challenge is simple, ask for 10% off of an order of coffee. Being a long follower of Noah Kagan, a successful entreprenuer, I’ve long known about this challenge.

The challenge forced me to ask for something I wanted in a low risk setting. We often want things, but can be too scared to ask.

Facing Fear of Failure -Fear Setting

This was another practice I learned from a great writer and business leader. Tim Ferriss regularly does this exercise when making big decisions.

This can be summarized in three easy steps. Defining fear. Preventing fear. Repairing fear. It can often be be found that what we imagine is far worse than what reality will offer. Since this practice also forces us to figure out how we can reduce the impact of whatever the fears may be, we have everything in our arsenal to remove any reason not to do pursue our goals.

All of these are simple practices that can be done to build up a tolerance for facing fears and overcoming challenges.

For the next few weeks, I’ll be loosening the shackles of technology. I’ll be implementing a no screens after 10 PM rule. To help with this, I’m going to try a recent tip I’ve heard, setting my phone to airplane mode earlier in the night.

On a side note, this post marks 52 weeks of TOBBI. Thank you for reading and helping me reach this milestone!