Diving into Dreams: Convincing Your Brain to Achieve More
Believe that you can do it, and you can do it.
In 2016, Fatima Korok, a young woman with ordinary problems and big dreams, decided to start a new chapter in her life. She was a tour guide and project manager, leading a comfortable life. However, she felt a yearning for something more, a desire to challenge herself and pursue her passions. With a leap of faith, she moved closer to the sea to explore her love for the water and learn scuba diving.
One day, she stumbled upon freediving, a sport that ignited a fire within her. Despite her struggles like weight and body image issues, she bravely dedicated herself to mastering this exhilarating sport. Her courage and determination paid off, as she achieved a world record in freediving (in free immersion discipline) within just six years. Since then, she has become a world champion, constantly improving daily. Fatima’s story is a great example of how success often begins with ordinary circumstances and small, consistent efforts.
Her inspiring journey shows that we don’t need a clear goal and a precise plan to achieve our dreams, and there is no right time for a change. We can create meaningful transformations in our lives by taking small steps and staying committed. She also gets sick and has doubts when she would like to give up. Fatima’s story encourages us to embrace our passions and pursue our dreams, regardless of our challenges.
The big picture might sometimes seem scary or too ambitious, but the small steps could be more familiar on the road.
We can harness the power of visualisation and fear-setting exercises to overcome our fears and doubts. Visualising our dreams and creating a plausible story that we genuinely believe in can empower us. Similarly, managing our fears by using fear-setting exercises, which help us evaluate and handle potential risks in a practical way, can give us a sense of control. With these tools, you can create a mental state where you see and feel your success, turning the unknown into a known and familiar picture. By mitigating the biggest possible fears and risks, you will believe that you can succeed.
Fatima’s journey shows us that consistently taking small steps towards our goals and dreams and managing our fears can create remarkable life changes.
It’s not about making huge leaps; it’s about accumulating small, courageous steps that lead to extraordinary achievements.
She is not a hero with a superpower. She is a woman with a dream and a passion for it.
Once you have a rough picture in your mind, use both your brain’s rational and imaginative parts to make it a plausible story for yourself that you can believe. Imagine that you are doing that thing for a while now. One year, or five years already. Focus on, see, feel, and imagine all the details you can. And repeat it frequently. Does it already feel good, relieving and makes you happy?
For the rational half, there’s a famous exercise that can help you manage your fears. It’s called ‘fear-setting ‘, a concept popularised by Tim Ferris. Fear-setting is not about setting goals but about identifying and managing as many potential risks and bad outcomes as possible before you take action. By considering the worst possible result and writing down the potential consequences, you can put your mind at ease, knowing that you’ve already prepared for several risks.
The exercise will benefit you if you spend the time and effort on it. Take a paper and imagine the worst case. Be as pessimistic as you can. Imagine that your whole world could collapse.
Start by asking yourself, ‘What if I…?’ Define the scenario and write it down.
For instance, what if you start your own business and it fails, leading to financial loss? What if you ask for an increase, talk to someone, and get rejected? Give it a score on a 1–10 scale, where 1 represents a minor effect, and 10 represents a life-changing outcome. This exercise helps you understand the potential risks and their severity.
Feeling shame is our biggest fear of all.
Consider its impact on you in time. How would it affect you after a day, week or month?
2. Consider steps and strategies to prevent it, manage and mitigate the risks, and develop as many options as possible.
The real risk is what remains after you mitigate all the known risks.
Following the same example, when you have no money left. You can still apply for a job to make a living, even if it is a fresh start. You may not do what you did on the same level, but you can make a living.
3. Finally, think about the cost of inaction.
If you don’t start that business, don’t talk to someone you would like to know or would not attend an event because of the fear in your mind, what would be its cost? Regret is definitely on the list, which can haunt us long. There is always more in it that we may not see initially.
The cost of inaction can be much higher than taking the courage to act.
If everything stays the same, that is also a cost. You could lose time, motivation, opportunities, and even money.
When you think that your life will be over, it is primarily your imagination that is more wired to the worst. But by mapping out the options and the consequences, you can now see that most of the worst cases temporarily affect your life.
Recheck the 1–10 scale, and you will see how the fear in the mind distorts our thoughts.
Sometimes, we already regret things that have not even happened yet.
In most cases, we just let our brain trick us and believe it is not worth trying because it could be devastating.
Fatima found her passion in freediving and learned a lot about its dangers. But she also saw the beauty of the sport and the benefits, which is her dream. She may have yet to do the exercise, but she considered that with all the dangers, it was what she wanted and took the first steps.
