These days, I’m reading a 50-year-old book called How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World, by a libertarian guy named Harry Browne.
In spite of Browne’s absolute trust in markets and the infallible human ability to rationally choose what we most want, the book gives a bunch of good and practical advice on how to live life more happily. Here’s one bit:
“If your lover is going to spend an evening with someone else, imagine the situation you’re afraid will happen. Imagine the worst. Picture them talking, laughing, kissing, making love – whatever it is you fear will happen. Keep doing it over and over again until it no longer affects you emotionally.”
I haven’t tried this with a wayward lover, but I have tried it when I was thinking to quit my office job, back in 2014, to start writing online.
On the one hand, I never wanted an office job. I didn’t particularly enjoy the one I had, even though it was as good as I could ever hope for. I wanted to control my own time and be productive rather than simply filling a seat.
But what if I quit my job to write online, and it didn’t work out? I would be leaving behind this sure thing for something unknown and unlikely to succeed… but I also didn’t want to stay at my job… but I also couldn’t commit to quitting… but the current job was unsupportable…. but the alternative could be even unsupportable!
I had read Tim Ferriss’s 440-Hour Workweek some time earlier, and Tim advocated pretty much the same thing that Browne suggests above — imagining the worst case scenario in detail, when faced with an uncertain and out-of-control life situation.
So I did what Tim Ferriss advocates for business, and what Harry Browne advocates for cheating, and I imagined the worst.
In my case, the worst meant I’d quit my job… try to make it online… fail… eventually burn through all my savings… have no money to even support myself while I looked for a job… have to move back to Croatia to live in my dad’s spare apartment… and look for a job there, without pressure.
When I faced up to the “worse than unsupportable” worst outcome, my anxiety and indecision vanished. Honestly, the worst really wasn’t that bad. And I could see now there was a fair chance it wouldn’t happen. I quit my job soon after, and I’ve been jobless ever since.
So that’s my bit of advice for you.
Here’s another bit of advice:
If you would like to take advantage of the above psychology to influence people — not by scaring them, but by getting them excited and encouraging them — then go ye and get my Copy Riddles program.
Because the same psychology that makes the unexamined “worst outcome” so scary also makes the unexamined “secret” or “blind opportunity” so exciting and tempting.
In both cases, we are standing outside the temple, with only a childish sense of all the wonders and terrors that must be hidden inside.
Copy Riddles guides you and imprints on you all the fine and delicate ways that A-list copywriters have discovered to play with this bit of human psychology. Owning these skills will be the most valuable skill, or thereabouts, you possess if you too write online.
For more info on Copy Riddles: