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So this happy picc of me was taken in one thousand and ninety nine as a senior and college and as red ever dance practice
I was really really happy
And i remember exactly where i was about we can half later
I was sitting in the back of my used minivan in a campus parking lot
When i decided that i was going to commit suicide
And i went from deciding to a full loan planning very quickly
And i came this close to the edge of the precipice
It's the closest i've ever come
And the only reason i took my finger off the trigger was thanks to a few lucky coincidances
And after the fact that's what scared me the most the element of chance
So i became very methodical about testing different ways that i could manage my ops and downs
Which has proven to be a good investment
Many normal people might have say six to ten major depressive episodes in their lives
I have by polidedepression ones in my family
I've had fifty plus at this point
And i've learned a lot
I've had a lot of at bats
Many rounds in the ring with darkness taking good notes
So i thought rather than get up and give any type of recipe for success or highlight
Real i would share my recipe for avoiding self destruction and certainly self paralysis
And the tool i found which has proven to be the most reliable safety net for emotional free fall is actually the same tool that has helped me to make my best business decisions
But that is secondary
And it is stiusism
That sounds boring my think of spock or my congiant image
Like this a cow standing in the rain
It's not sad
It's not particularly happy
It's just an impassive creature taking whatever life
Life sends its way
You might not think of the ultimate competitor say bill
Dellecheeck
Head coach and newing and patriots is the all time time nfl record for super bl titles and stouism has spread like wildfire in the top of the nfl ranks as a means of mental toughness training in the last few years
You might not think of the founding fathers
Thomas
Jefferson
John adams
George washington to name but three students of stowacism
George washington actually had a play about astolic
This was keeto a tragedy performed for his troops at valley forge to keep them motivated
So why would people of action focus so much on an ancient philosopy that seems very academic
And i would encourage you to think about stouusm a little bit differently as an operating system for thriving in high stress environments for making better decisions
And it all started here kind of on a porch so around three hundred bc in athens
Someone named zino of city
Um taught many lectures walking around a painted porch
A stoa that later became stouism and in the grker roman worlds
People use stoisism as a comprehensive system for doing many many things
But for our purposes
Chief among them was training yourself to separate what you can control from what you cannot control
And then doing exercises to focus exclusively on the former this decreases emotional reactivity which can be a superpower
Conversely let's say your quarter back
You miss a pass
You get furious with yourself
That could cost you you again for your ceo
And you fly off the handle at a very valued employee
Because of a minor infraction
That could cost you the employee
If you're a college student
Who say is in a downward spiral
And you feel help us and hopeless unobaated
That could cost you your life
So the stakes are very very high
And thethere 're many tools in the tk ket to get you there
I'm going to focus on one
That completely changed my life in two thousand four
And it found me
Then because of two things
A very close friend
Young guy
My age died of pancradtic cancer are unexpectedly
And then
Then ggirfrifriend who i thought i was going
Marmarry walked out
E'd had enough
And she didn't give me a dear john letter
But she did me give me a dear john pluack not making this up
I'kept it business hours are over at five o'clock
She gave this to me
To put on my desk for personal health
Because the time i was working on my first real business
I had no idea what i was doing
I was working
Fourteen plus houra days
Seven days
A week
I was using stimuluants to get going
I was using depresence to wind down
To go
To sleep
It was a disaster ter felt completely trapped
And i bought a book on simplicity to try to find answers
And i did find a quote that made a big difference in my life
Which was we suffer more often in imagination than in reality
By sannaka the younger
He was a famous stooric writer
That took me to his letters
Which took me to the exercise premited atatoo malorum
Which means the premeditation of evis and in simple terms
This is visualizing the worst case scenarios in detail that you fear
Preventing you from taking actions
That you can take action to overcome that proousis
My problem was monkey mind
Superloud
Very incessant just thinking my way through problems doesn't work
I needed to capture my thoughts on paper
So i created a written exercise that i called fear setting like goal setting for myself
And it consists of three pages supersimple the first page is right here
What if i thought got that question mark this is whatever you fear
Whatever is causing you anxiety
Whatever you're putting off
Could be asking someone out ending a relationship
Asking for promotion
Quitting a job
Starting a company could be anything for me
It was taking my first vacation in four years
And stepping away from my business for a month to go to london
Where i could stay in a friendch room for free to either remove myself as a bottom
That in the business were shutit down in the first column
Define you're writing down all of the worst things
You can imagine happening if you take that step and you want ten to twenty
I'm not going to go through all of them
But i give you two examples
So one one i'i'll go llondon 'll be rainy
I'll get depressed the whole thing
I'll a huge waste e time number number two
I'll miss a letter from the iss
I'll get audited or raided or shut down or some such
Then you go to the prevent column in that column wrright down the answer too
What could i do to prevent each of these balls from happening or at the very least decreased the likelihood even a little bit
So for getting depressed in london
I could take a portable blue light with me
And use it for fifteen minutes in the morning
I knew that helped to stay ve off depressive pisodes for the ios bit
I could change the mailing address on file to the ios
So the paper work would go to my account instead of my ups address
Easy busy
Then we go to repair
So if the worst case in areas happened what could you do to repair the damage even a little bit or who could you ask for help
So in the first case london
Well i could foreover over some money fly to span get some sun undo the damage
If i got into a funk in the case so have missing letter from the i os
I could call a friend who is a lawyer or ask say a professor of law
What they would recommend who i should talk to how had people handle this in the past so one question to keep in mind as 're doing this first page is has anyone else in the history of time
Less intelligent or less driven figured this out chances are the answer is yes
The second page 没有
没的
没有is simple
What might be the benefits of an attempt or a partial success
You can see we're playing up the fears and really taking conservative look at the upside
So if you attempted
Whatever you're considering it might you build confidence
Develop skills
Emotionally financially
Otherwise
What might be the benefits of saabbase hit spent ten to fifty minutes on this page three
This might be the most important
So don't skip it
The cost of inaction humans are very good at considering what might go wrong
If we try something new say asked for a rase
What we don't often consider is the atrocious cost of the sttius flow not changing anything
So you should ask yourself
If i avoid this action or decision and actions and decisions like it
What might my life look like in say six months
Prelve months
Three years
Any further out it starts to seem intensible and really get detailed again emotionally
Financially
Physically whatever
And when i did this
It painted a terrifying picture
I was self medicating
My business was going to employ it at any moment at all times
But instep away
My relationships were frraying or failing
And i realized that inaction was no longer in option for me those are the three pages
That's it's fear setting
And after this
I realized that on a scale of one to ten
One being minimal impact
Ten being maximual impact
If i took the trip as risking a one to three of temporary and reversible pain for an eight to ten of positive life changing impact that could be semi permanent
So i took the trip
None of the disasters came to pass
There were some hickups
Sure
I was able to extrcate myself from the business
I ended up extending that trip for a year and half around the world
And that that became the basis for my first book
That leads me here today
And i can trace all of my biggest wins and all of my biggest disasters averted back to doing fear setting at least
Once a quarter
It's not a penancia
You'll find that
Some of your fears are very well founded
But you shouldn't conclude that without first putting them under a microscope
And it doesn't make all the hard times
The hard choice is easy
But it can make a lot of them easier so like to close with a profile of on my favorite modern day stostoics
This is jersey gregoric
He is a four time world champion
The olympicate lifting political refugee published poet
Fifty two years old
He can still kick my
Us and probably most assess in this room
Even an impressive guy
I spent a lot of time on his stole
At his porch
Asking life and training advice
He was part of the solidarity in poland
Which was a nonviolent movement for social changes
That was violently suppressed by the government
He lost his career as a firefighter
Then his mentor priest was kidnapped
Tortured
Killed and thrown into a river
He was then threatened
He His
His fe fe to flepple and grounds from country to country
Until they landed in the us with next to nothing sleeping on floors
He now lives in wooside california
In a very nice place and of the ten thousand plus people i've met in my life
I would put him in the top ten in terms of success and happiness
And there's a punchline coming
It's a pay attention
I sent him a text few weeks ago
Asking him had he ever read any stock philosophy
And he replied with two pages of text
This is very unlike him
He is a tourist dude and not only with he familiar stnoticism
But he pointed out for all of his most important decisions
His inflection points
When he stood up for his principles and ethics
How he had used stosiism and something it kin defear setting which blee my mind
And he closed with two things
Number one
He couldn't imagine any life more beautiful than that at ostostolic in the last was his montra
Which he applies to everything
And you can apply to everything
Easy choices
Hard life
Hard choices
Easy life
The hard choices what we most fear doing
Asking saying these are very often
Exactly what we most need to do
And the biggest challenges and problems
We face will never be solved with comfortable conversations
Whether it's in your own head or with other people so encourage you to ask yourselves
Where in your lives right now might defining your fears be more important
Than defining your goals keeping in mind
All the while
The words of synica we suffer more often in imagination than in reality
Thank you very much
