“I’m afraid I will make stupid mistakes”
“I’m afraid people will disagree”
“I’m afraid critics will criticize”
“I’m afraid I won’t be able to keep up”
“I’m afraid it’s going to be like the last time”
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The lists of reasons for fear goes on and on and echoes in one’s head.
“I’ve spent my life trying to undo habits—especially habits of thinking. They narrow your interaction with the world. They’re the phrases that come easily to your mind, like: ‘I know what I think,’ or ‘I know what I like,’ or ‘I know what’s going to happen today.’ If you just replace ‘know’ with ‘don’t know,’ then you start to move into the unknown. And that’s where the interesting stuff happens.”- Humans of New York
For survival, humans developed way more negative thoughts than the positive counterparts. Fear do come up more often, and I do face them when I’m changing my routines and untangling my habits. Writing is an example.
” Why should I put my thoughts out there? ”
” What if no one reads it?”
” What if I get criticized ?”
Thes thoughts prevent me from sharing my thoughts.
But wait a minute, would fear make my life meaningful ? Are these thoughts productive toward taking me to my goal ? Let’s try to answer that.
- I want to be better, know the truth and shape the way I view the world with reality.- In order to be better, any learning required feedback loop. The more iterations the better. Homework and graded homework, Decisions and Aggregated Outcomes, Cause and Effects, Hypothesis and Experiments.- By letting fear stop you from doing, you won’t get any feedback from what you do. Without mistakes, there can’t be success.- All that is left is omission and potentially regret once your most scarce resource, time, ticks down.
The choice of inaction is worse than making mistakes.
“In most case, biggest regrets turns out to be acts of omission.”—Jeff Bezos
Fear is often unproductive thoughts.
Here we go, fear less, act more.