Is a publishing professional with more than twenty years of

reason 2. You’re afraid of the Job
This is a hard thing for many of us to admit—to ourselves let 
alone  to  someone  else.  But  it  may  be  what’s  keeping  you  from 
doing a job you need and want to accomplish. If you can identify 
your reluctance as fear or low self-esteem and track it to its source, 
you can deal with the fear and get on with the job. Here are three 
of the most common varieties of performance anxiety:
  1.  Fear of failure
Consider the student who never studies and flunks out. He can 
always tell himself, “If I had studied, I would have passed the stu-
pid course.” But what if he had studied—and still failed?
For most of us, “won’t” is a lot easier to deal with than “can’t.” 
If you don’t try it, you don’t have to confront the possibility that 
you can’t do it. You will always be able to tell yourself and others 
that you could have been a great success at just about anything you 
wanted to do.
  2.  Fear of success
On the other hand, if you do pass the course, folks will expect 
you  to  do  it  again,  or  to  go  out  and  get  a  job,  or  to  apply  what 
you’ve learned. If you never try, you’ll never have to face the con-
sequences of success, either.
  3.  Fear of finishing
“If I pass the course, I’ll graduate. If I graduate, I’ll . . .”
You’ll what?
If you don’t pass the course, you’ll never have to find out what 
happens next.

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If you never write the novel, you’ll never have to know whether 
a publisher would have accepted it.
If  you  don’t  finish  basic  training,  you’ll  never  have  to  know 
whether you could have really hacked it in the military.
Sometimes the not knowing seems more acceptable than the 
possible consequences of finding out for sure.
But how sad to let such fears prevent you from even trying.
Identify  the  fear  or  the  issue  that  has  caused  your  low  self-
esteem. Give it a name and confront it. Imagine the consequences 
of your actions or non-actions as objectively as you can.
The fear won’t go away. But if the goal is worth pursuing, and 
you set your sights on the benefits of reaching the goal, you’ll be 
able to act despite the fear.