The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur

February 24Fear and Doubt

Adhere to your own act, and congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant and broken the monotony of a decorous age. It was a high counsel that I once heard given to a young person,— “Always do what you are afraid to do.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson—“Heroism,” in Essays, First Series (1841)

Face the fear and just do it.

In addition to sounding a bit like a marketing slogan, that statement has become standard advice for entrepreneurs.

Before you push it aside as yet another thing you're supposed to do, sit with this idea—fear and doubt show up to tell you something. You can choose to ignore them, but they probably won't go away.

Learn to tune into your fears and doubts, witness them, study them, laugh at them, and then you just might become a bit more fully aware of your true path.

Steven Pressfield's The War of Art, the book-length version of today's reading, offers this nugget to chew on:

Are you paralyzed with fear? That's a good sign. Fear is good. Like self-doubt, fear is an indicator. Fear tells us what we have to do.

Challenge Question

1. What scares you the most about your journey? Why?