Hey Karen, true, I will be surrounded by people who love me, like me, and are rooting for me. This is the exact reason why it contributes to my fear and why I believe failure would hurt. I don’t know about you, but as a kid (and still today) I get more nervous when my parents are watching because I love them and I want everything to go well. I don’t want to disappoint, I want to perform, for myself and for them.

At the end of the day, we are all on the same page and it will be OK, but you want things to go better than OK, you want things to go great.

Because I’ll be pitching in front of a crowd of 100 or so, in front of people whose opinions I value, I imagine the ground would not be that soft. I don’t like failing in public on stage for everyone to see. I like failing in private alone for myself to reflect. But maybe this contributes to the problem? This is an interesting experiment for me so I can better understand the reasons why I am feeling this fear of failure and what can be done about it.