Smash fear and Learn anything – Overcome fear by learning, because in this world, we all start from something we don’t know, don’t know, never have.
Many times we have heard the encouraging words that “No one is born knowing how to do something.” And it is true. We have to start, learn, and repeat until we finally do it. But we still have something called “fear.” We are afraid to start learning new things, whether it is fear of embarrassment, fear of being stupid, fear of making mistakes, or fear of failing in the end.
Tim Ferriss, investor, author and bestseller, author of The 4-hour body, Tools of Titans, The 4-hour work week and many more. His talks on Overcoming Fear and Learning Anything are considered the best of TED.com and are considered the best of the best not TED talks but the most shareable ideas.
“These are things I can’t do.”
Tim told us that when he was a child, he always thought he was like the green giant hero or the Hulk in the movie, who could do anything and had great strength. Until the age of 7, he went to a camp as his parents told him to. While at the camp, there were often water activities for him to join. Even though he didn’t like water that much because he had a chronic disease, he decided to jump into the water like other children. But unfortunately, a naughty kid grabbed his ankle and an accident happened. He struggled for air, struggling to prevent himself from dying. Even though he survived because the teacher saw him first, the memories and fear at that time made him realize that he was not the Hulk in the movie. He couldn’t swim.
“The best work in life is often delayed by misguided creations and untested assumptions.”
Of course, as he grew older, he still couldn’t swim and listed swimming as one of his biggest fears until he was challenged by a friend to a 1km open water swim. It rekindled his love of swimming.
Tim started taking swimming lessons, studying with top swim instructors, swimming schools, watching videos, asking experts, and even studying with Olympic swimmers. But it didn’t work out. He still couldn’t swim until his good friend Christ Sacca introduced him to Terry Lauglin, owner of Total Immersion Swimming. He broke all the rules of swimming instruction he had ever known.
“I’m back as the Hulk again.”
He learned how to swim, starting with what was called “biomechanics,” studying buoyancy, the mass of water, the mass of the human body, how to balance and float in the water and move forward. Of course, never mind how to kick your legs fast and hard. On the day he won the 1-kilometer open-water swim race, he emerged from the water in a European-style swimsuit and posed, feeling as if he had become a green giant again.
What I meant to say was, “Please wake me up at 8am.” But what I actually said was, “Please rape me at 8am.”
Tim said that in high school, after transferring schools, his new school still allowed him to choose to study a language, and he had a friend who was studying Japanese, so he chose to study Japanese without thinking too much. Six months later, he was given the opportunity to study in Japan. His teacher told him that it was a great opportunity, a wonderful memory, and of course he believed her. On the first night of living with a host family in Japan, the Japanese woman was very confused when the exchange student who had been living in her house for less than a day asked her to rape him at 8 am….
“I started researching anxiously because nothing was getting better.”
On his first day of studying in Japan, he discovered that the Japanese language class was not teaching Japanese to exchange students like him, but to Japanese children. His teacher handed him a letter, which contained many Japanese kanji characters. Of course, he couldn’t read any of it, and when he asked the teacher for the meaning of the letter, she slowly explained it in Japanese, but it didn’t help him understand at all.
Tim returned to research how to learn Japanese most effectively until he came across Joyo kanji or tablets of 1945 characters set by the Ministry of Education in 1981. Luckily, most newspapers, articles and books tried to limit the characters by using the tablets mostly. He successfully jumped the level of Japanese from 1 to 4 and made money from translating Japanese documents since the age of 16.
“Being effective is doing the right thing. Being effective is doing things well, whether they matter or not.”
This is the difference between being effective and being efficient. Tim found that he could learn 5-6 languages as well in a given amount of time. He discovered 6 sentences that would help him to clearly break down grammar, showing the subject, object, verb, and word position by converting these sentences into past, present, and future tense, which would work for any language learning.
- The apple is red.
- It is John’s apple.
- I gave John the apple.
- We want to give him the apple.
- He gave it to John.
- She gives it to him.
Sometimes we don’t have to follow someone else’s path that they say is right or that it’s a necessary step to learn. People always have their own way of learning. A single way of learning can’t make 100% of people know the same thing.
“When I was in college, I was waltzing with a girl and I stepped on her foot with my heel.”
Tim says he still remembers it well. He decided to join a tango class in 2005 without even trying it out after he stepped on the foot of a girl he was dancing with in college. He had always thought he was not good at dancing, but this would be the beginning of a new way of learning.
“According to Parkinson’s Law, the complexity of a task depends on the time given to it.”
After taking tango lessons, he began to take notes and learn the characteristics of the follower, or the dance of the woman who had to dance with him first, so as not to step on his feet twice.
He listed three things that he learned from observing, analyzing and interviewing great dancers compared to ordinary people with no dancing experience. One was the long strides, which most tango dancers have relatively short strides, but he found that the long strides produced more beautiful movements. Two was the different kinds of turns that he had to do. And three was the variety of rhythms.
“These are the 3 things that are necessary to fight against a tango fighter who has been training for 20-30 years.”
It really was impossible, little did that girl in college know that the guy who had stepped on her foot at the party had become the tango champion in Buenos Aires four months after paying to take classes. He competed in the world championships, reaching the semifinals a month later, and broke the world record two weeks later.
“Fear is your friend. Fear is your measure.”
Because starting to do something new is stepping into a land we don’t know, or a land we’ve been to before but it’s been cruel to us, so it’s not strange if fear takes hold of our minds. Sometimes it shows us what we shouldn’t do, but more than that, it shows us what we really should do.
“My best work and my funniest moments started with the question, what’s the worst thing that could happen?”
Tim doesn’t start things with the best possible future outcome. He doesn’t look to the outcome to motivate himself to start, but rather to his past fears, his childhood memories, or whatever the worst thing that could happen to him is if he doesn’t do it, if he hasn’t done it, or if he doesn’t understand it.
Conclusion
If we do nothing, nothing will happen. We cannot stand still forever. Humans are social animals that need to move forward.
Are there fears holding us back today? Are there things that keep us from moving forward?
When you were a child, was there something you were most afraid of? Did you try to run through it?
If the methods others tell us don’t work, have we tried to find ways to overcome those fears ourselves?
The fear at that time may become the best work of our lives in the future.
“We should use our abilities to turn our childhood fears into big dreams for ourselves.”
Smash fear, learn anything | Tim Ferriss
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