Se mi dai 7 minuti ti Restituirò 10 Anni Rubati dalla Paura — Transcript

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1. 0:00There is one single thing that kept me
2. 0:02stuck for years, and it wasn’t a lack
3. 0:04of money or a lack of time; it was fear
4. 0:06—the fear of others 'judgment, the
5. 0:08fear of making mistakes, the fear of
6. 0:10failure. Silently, almost politely, it
7. 0:14told me every morning, "It’s not time
8. 0:16yet, you’re not ready, let it go."
9. 0:19And I believed this story told by fear.
10. 0:22Then I encountered three ideas that
11. 0:23made me realize that this fear wasn’t
12. 0:25protecting me from something; it was
13. 0:26lying to me. And these three ideas come
14. 0:29from a psychiatrist, a philosopher who
15. 0:31died 2,000 years ago, and a woman who
16. 0:32spent many years by the side of people
17. 0:34who were about to die. I won’t tell
18. 0:37you that fear was wrong, or that you
19. 0:39should just throw yourself into things,
20. 0:41but I will tell you how these ideas
21. 0:43gave me back years of my life and how
22. 0:45you can stop wasting yours because of
23. 0:46fear. Let’s begin. You surely know
24. 0:50that lump in your throat, that physical
25. 0:53sensation you get before sending a job
26. 0:55application, before talking to someone
27. 0:57you find important, before saying
28. 0:59something difficult. Randolph Nesse—
29. 1:03Nesse is easier—is a psychiatrist who
30. 1:05built an entire book around this idea
31. 1:08called*Good Reasons for Bad Feelings*.
32. 1:10And in Italian, it translates well to "
33. 1:11buone ragioni per stare male." And the
34. 1:14basic idea is this: that feeling is not
35. 1:16a prediction of something going wrong,
36. 1:18but rather like an alarm. An alarm that
37. 1:20is designed to go off too much.
38. 1:24Unfortunately, most of us—myself
39. 1:25included until recently—think that
40. 1:27feeling, that fear, is a warning that
41. 1:29something might go wrong or will go
42. 1:31wrong; and so, automatically, as the
43. 1:33sensible and logical people we are, we
44. 1:35think it’s dangerous to do that thing
45. 1:37because we are afraid, and therefore,
46. 1:39it’s better to wait for that fear to
47. 1:41pass before starting. The problem with
48. 1:45this approach, which is what we are all
49. 1:47taught, is that unfortunately, fear
50. 1:48does not go away by waiting. Because
51. 1:52you might wait to feel ready to change
52. 1:54jobs, then that fear might pass, and
53. 1:56another one automatically arrives; and
54. 1:58our system is designed to make us avoid
55. 2:00change, because change is something
56. 2:02unknown, while what we know, however
57. 2:04unpleasant, is safe in some way. And
58. 2:07it’s a trap I have fallen into many
59. 2:09times. It is a trap that emerges
60. 2:11automatically. It's a fear that emerges
61. 2:14every time I have to make a significant
62. 2:15choice, so for a long time I told
63. 2:17myself that if I'm this scared, it
64. 2:18means maybe I shouldn't do it, and I'd
65. 2:19just stay put. But the real problem is
66. 2:22how this alarm is built. It is an alarm
67. 2:24that is built to go off a lot. Because
68. 2:27for our ancestors in the savanna, the
69. 2:29jungle, or the forests, when they heard
70. 2:31a rustle, running away cost a bit of
71. 2:32energy, a bit of breath; not running
72. 2:34away might have cost them their lives
73. 2:36because a saber-toothed tiger or a
74. 2:38giant bear might have been there to eat
75. 2:39them. So our alarm has been built over
76. 2:43thousands of years to sound too much,
77. 2:44even when there is no real danger. And
78. 2:46everything that happens to us in life
79. 2:49—for me, it was a series of
80. 2:50experiences with instability in life,
81. 2:53economic precariousness, and health
82. 2:55problems of people I loved—leads you
83. 2:57to turn up this alarm; they fuel it,
84. 2:59making it sound louder and louder. So
85. 3:02every time you feel afraid of something
86. 3:05and maybe think it's senseless, start
87. 3:06thinking of this alarm as a sort of
88. 3:08smoke detector. If you just burned some
89. 3:12toast in the kitchen or overcooked your
90. 3:14fries, the alarm goes off anyway,
91. 3:15sounding as if there were a devastating
92. 3:16fire in the house, but in reality, you
93. 3:18just burned a piece of toast. So if the
94. 3:21alarm goes off, you go check the
95. 3:22toaster, you don't run out into the
96. 3:24street grabbing the cat, your child,
97. 3:25your shower cap, and calling the fire
98. 3:27department. Well, check to see if there
99. 3:29really is a fire. Therefore, fear is
100. 3:31not a prediction; it is an alarm. And
101. 3:34if you want to continue with me on this
102. 3:35journey of dismantling things that keep
103. 3:37us unnecessarily stuck in life,
104. 3:38subscribe to the channel because I do
105. 3:40it here with you, one video after
106. 3:42another. And a few years ago, a person
107. 3:45I know and respect a lot, by the way,
108. 3:47had me read a quote from Seneca that
109. 3:49sounds more or less like this: "There
110. 3:51are more things that frighten us than
111. 3:53things that oppress us, and we suffer
112. 3:54more often in imagination than in
113. 3:56reality." Because the point is that
114. 3:58fear does not live in the present. Fear
115. 4:00lives in a future that does not exist
116. 4:03yet and probably never will. It's a bit
117. 4:06like background anxiety. And we fill
118. 4:08this future with movies. The boss calls
119. 4:10you into his office and you have
120. 4:11already cleared out your desk. People
121. 4:13laughing before you’ve even made your
122. 4:16first attempt or your first YouTube
123. 4:18video, as in my case, and it’s all
124. 4:20just a movie, and practically 99.9%of
125. 4:23these movies never air. When they do
126. 4:25air, it’s different; it’s
127. 4:26definitely not as bad as we had
128. 4:27imagined it to be. So, how do we detach
129. 4:29ourselves from this movie? There are
130. 4:32three ways I’ve learned to use to
131. 4:34return to reality and thus stop being
132. 4:36afraid, seeing it for what it is: an
133. 4:38anticipation, a movie. The first way is
134. 4:40to give the fear a name out loud, so
135. 4:42start saying what you feel. I feel
136. 4:44afraid of this thing I have to do, or
137. 4:46that event, or that call. Saying you
138. 4:48feel this sensation already allows you
139. 4:50to take a step back, to defuse from
140. 4:51your thought. The second is to write it
141. 4:53down on a piece of paper, on a note on
142. 4:55your phone, just write it down. The
143. 4:56third, if the other two ways don't work
144. 4:58, is to ask yourself a question. Is
145. 5:00this thing happening right now, or am I
146. 5:02just telling it to myself? Because, no
147. 5:05matter how real it may seem, a movie or
148. 5:07a catastrophic scenario in your head
149. 5:09isn't actually happening. It’s only
150. 5:12in your head. You are on the couch or
151. 5:13you are watching my video, and what is
152. 5:16real is what you are doing right now,
153. 5:18not what you are imagining. It’s not
154. 5:20real. And I know it all seems really
155. 5:22simple because, in reality, it is
156. 5:24really simple, and don’t discard
157. 5:25these tools just because they seem too
158. 5:27easy—try them. But there is one thing
159. 5:30that they don’t tell you, which is
160. 5:31how much it costs you to keep listening
161. 5:33to your fear. And a book made me
162. 5:35realize this, one I honestly wish I
163. 5:37hadn’t read because it was very heavy
164. 5:40for my approach to certain topics, and
165. 5:42it’s called "The Top Five Regrets of
166. 5:44the Dying," written by Bronnie Ware.
167. 5:46She is an Australian woman who spent
168. 5:48many years of her life assisting people
169. 5:51who were at the end of their own, and
170. 5:53she noted, remembered, and wrote down
171. 5:55everything they told her. And the
172. 5:57biggest regret, the most common one,
173. 5:59the one I don't want to have when my
174. 6:01life ends—and I believe you don’t
175. 6:03either—is: "I wish I’d had the
176. 6:06courage to live a life true to myself,
177. 6:08not the life others expected of me."
178. 6:10And this is something that has also
179. 6:11been studied at a psychological level.
180. 6:13The things we regret most in the short
181. 6:15term are the things we did, but in the
182. 6:17long term, in what really counts, they
183. 6:18are the things we didn't have the
184. 6:20courage to do. And this book helped
185. 6:23open my eyes to: "I'll do it when I'm
186. 6:25not afraid" or "I'll do it when the
187. 6:27time is right," all those illusory
188. 6:29shelters like "next year" or "in
189. 6:31another situation" that kept me from
190. 6:33everything I truly wanted in my life.
191. 6:36And the 10 years I put in the title
192. 6:38aren't just a random number; they are a
193. 6:40real number. If you don't do that thing
194. 6:42today, what will your life be like in
195. 6:4410 years? When I feel afraid of doing
196. 6:46something, I ask myself, "What would
197. 6:48the Giuseppe of 10 years older say
198. 6:50about me?" Because the Giuseppe who
199. 6:52will be near 50-13 years old is my goal
200. 6:55, my idol. And then there will be the
201. 6:57Giuseppe of 60 and 70, and hopefully 80
202. 6:59, 90, 100, 110. And so I absolutely
203. 7:02don't want to disappoint him, because I
204. 7:04remember exactly the last moment a
205. 7:06while ago when I said "I'm afraid," and
206. 7:07in that moment, Arianna hugged me and
207. 7:09said, "Go forward, because fear doesn't
208. 7:11exist." And it doesn't matter how many
209. 7:13of these ideas stay with you, because a
210. 7:15little fear will always remain. The
211. 7:17difference is that most people wait for
212. 7:19it to pass, while others start moving
213. 7:21while still afraid. So that alarm will
214. 7:24keep ringing. Go see if there's a fire,
215. 7:25and if there isn't, keep moving forward
216. 7:27. In the next video, I'll tell you
217. 7:29about the three ideas that changed how
218. 7:31I use the time I regained when I
219. 7:32stopped being afraid. See you there,
220. 7:34and I truly wish you the best.