Fear Setting and 80/20

Two primary forces drive our actions - love or fear. Everything we do in life can be linked to either of these, on a high level. For instance, most people do their jobs, with more fear than love. The split may vary, but exists in almost every situation. Things that give us most joy are the ones that come out of love. Like a mother caring for her child or a child playing fearlessly. We can get into the weeds of what classifies as love or fear, but that's outside the scope of this article.

A good north star for us to chase could be to limit fear within certain boundaries. But why not aim for eliminating it? Well, because fear has it's place and significance in our lives. Many of us might see it negatively, but the core reason for it's presence is to save us. I'd want the fear to rule my senses if I'm chased by a big yellow cat, for instance. A more realistic example is the fear of losing my job, or worse, not having enough money to cover my basic needs for a period of time (varies for each of us). ​While fear has it's place, most of us truly flourish when we do things out of love, aka passion in today's world. Passion is a possible outcome of love, but doesn't need to be always there. A person might love running, programming, baking, doing art, or even playing lego, for instance. It has to be real. We can dive deeper into that in a separate discussion. In essence, it's something that brings joy to our inner child, or has the potential to do so. It could be something done without a reason. As long as any of it doesn't impact another person negatively.

Now that we've defined love and fear, let's get to the meat of this article (no offence to the vegans, I'm one myself). Since both love and fear have their roles in our lives, finding the right balance between them can be the key to fulfilment. The probability of big yellow cats chasing us in today's world is fairly low, so why not aim for a more joyous and fulfilled life by applying the 80/20 rule to these? We can aim to spend 80% of our time and energy doing things out of love, or to put simply, where there's absence of fear, and the rest 20% of our time doing what's needed to survive, aka fear based stuff. It would not feel easy because the 'love muscle' is usually weak and untrained - we forget to flex it in adulthood. Which means it needs more focus and attention that anything else, and hence 80% time for it. This might sound wishy-washy so let me share an experiment I am starting with.

I was recently working at a job where I was very unhappy, extremely fear based. I wished to get out of it and spend my time reading, learning, and training. Fate helped me do what I couldn't. I lost the job and my default was to immediately start looking for the new one. Even though I had created a decent financial backup (for 3-6 months), my fear instincts won't let me do what I wanted to. So we sat together (me and my fears) and worked out a plan of mutual interest, where for a month, I'd allocate 20% of my time to the fears - doing job search, applications, interviews, etc, and the remaining of it on what I'd been wishing for - learn, read, train. If I don't find them amusing, I'd look for something else, but keep my fears in check. I get to do what I started out with - trying an experiment to change and do better, than repeating the same stuff again. The definition of success for this experiment is that I get to try limiting my fears, so any outcome that helps me do it is a success.

You might be wondering - that sounds good on paper, but why don't you just tell me what to do? I cannot give you a one-size-fits-all approach because I'm not you. But I can share how I am using this, and invite you to try this experiment: Identify the things you do out of love versus fear. Start by shifting just a small percentage of your time toward love-driven activities. Observe how it impacts your mindset. Don't be disappointed if fear makes up a big portion - it's our default because that's how we evolved to survive. But with mindfulness and right tools, you have the power to change it. If you try this, I'd love to hear how it works for you.