Every morning, I am full of fear

But I know it’s good for me

It’s 8:59am. I’m getting started later than usual. I spent a few more minutes in bed because I was scared.

Heck, I’m scared right now as I type this.

I’m not as scared as I was 5 minutes ago, when I was getting dressed. The fear was much worse then. I walked toward my keyboard, and I had to turn around.

There was a smudge on my glasses. There was no way I could do what I was about to do with this smudge on my glasses. I had to clean my glasses. My glasses had to be crystal clear.

I couldn’t delay any longer. As I lay my fingers on the home keys, the fear peaked.

My house isn’t going into foreclosure, I’m not awaiting biopsy results, and my chances of being eaten by a cheetah today are not even .00000000000000000000001%.

So, what do I have to be scared of?

I’m scared because by the time I’m done typing this article, I hope it makes sense. If not, I have until about 9:59am before it goes out into the world, making sense or not.

I’m scared because after I hit Publish, I’ll spend some amount of time checking to see how many people read this article; and how many people ♥’d it. This will briefly have some effect on my sense of self-worth.

I’m scared because there’s a good chance someone will leave a comment that makes me feel hurt, or worth-less, or angry for, like, a few seconds.

In other words, I’m scared for no reason at all.

Nobody cares but my self whether this article makes any sense; nobody cares but my self whether a good number of people read this; and trolls have their own issues. I know from experience, deep down, anger is usually about something else. Besides, Internet commenters never read the article.

If you were scared of a stuffed animal, wouldn’t that bother you? Because these fears are so trivial, I feel compelled to face them every morning. Every morning, the first hour of my day, I write and publish a 500-word Medium article. The fear is the worst when I first touch my keyboard, because, at that point, I still don’t know what I’m going to write about.

This habit is specifically designed to make manageable the fear — the Pressfieldian Resistance. There is a specific time I have agreed to do it, there is a specific length I have agreed to write, and I even do it standing up, so I’m eager to get finished.

If I’m tempted to say “I’ll just check email for a second,” or “let me see what’s going on on Facebook for just a second,” I can’t fool myself: I’m breaking my agreement.

And even if this article is terrible, and it gets 0 Views and 0 Recommends, there is always tomorrow — if I’m only so lucky.

Listen to Jeff Goins, author of The Art of Work, on my podcast, explaining why failure is part of the process of finding success. Subscribe on iTunes.