The Fear Under Every Project You Never Shipped

I used to believe that my deepest fear with respect to publishing creative work or my own projects was the fear of failure or potentially the fear of success. Sorry, my hoodie’s dirty. It’s been a long day. those fears, funny enough, are actually quite simple to overcome. They’re ones that I help my clients overcome quite rapidly No, the fear that I think so far has trumped them all

is the fear that no one will ever care

The fear that I will invest my entire being into that which I love and am passionate about

and would like to build In order to help people,

and to interrogate my own personal interests and to push the boundaries of science and engineering in the fields that I find most interesting. those tend to be the three, the three prongs of my pursuit

and the fear of failure or the fear of success can both be intimidating.

But they are fears that with the right support, the right reframes, the right mental fortitude, the right accountability, the right tools can be hard to deal with, hard to tango with, but also manageable

But I was just sitting on my front stoop, on my curb here in San Diego, and I was watching the palm trees turn into silhouettes over the course of the sunset. The nice upper layer of clouds on the top of the sky were turning pink, and the ones below them had turned gray as they kind of drifted across in the fog.

And lights started to turn on on the streets, and neighbors were making dinner, and a siren goes by. A couple crickets jumped around on the ground. Very peaceful. I was listening to

the gentleman who

composed all the scores for the Studio Ghibli movies. And there are a couple of those pieces of music that I find deeply endearing. And so I was listening to this really quiet music for about an hour and a half, drinking a sparkling water, watching the sun go over the horizon, over the ocean, and the light turn pink and then orange and then yellow and then blue and then dark, and then just having these silhouettes.

And I was thinking about some of the most recent content that I put out, because I’m, I’m an engineer. I’m a scientist. I’m a builder. I’m a creator. I’m a coach. These are things I’m good at. the things behind the scenes of these videos, I’m good at But this part of the equation is pivotal to the entirety of the mission, and it’s something that I have not proven myself in.

And it is the part of the process where the thing that is delivered, the product, the service, the idea is conveyed, is put out into the world.

In delivery, the failure mode is different because in delivery, a person is in your world, and you are either succeeding with them or you are not. But that person is there. The thing is there. In this world, the failure mode is not necessarily just did someone like or did someone not? Very often it is did anyone see at all?

and while I was sitting with myself and thinking about that, I recognized that it was actually quite deep for me, the fear of not being heard at all which doesn’t imply that my desire is to be heard.i-it’s funny, right? I don’t have this strong desire to be heard, which is funny if you look at my profile.

I yap a lot online. But I do have a fear of not being heard at all

And that presents me with two roads. We have road one, which is I allow that fear to overcome and I don’t convey my message, and I quietly fade out into the ether of some other job, doing something else because I’m not willing to take the chance to find the people who are willing to engage Or I take the second road, which is I continue to test that fear of the fear of not being heard

by engaging in exactly this way

the thing about being able to rationally dialogue with your fears like I’m doing right now, this is effectively a, a very deep journal entry , is it allows for you to look down the road instead of just comparing the directions they head out or not even doing that at all, just reactively choosing one

The ability to not just intentionally choose a road, but to look down those roads and to see not only what might occur there in the positive, what is possible, but also to see what are the likely consequences. Because on the first road The likely consequences are a feeling of regret

A feeling of having quit, a feeling of having let fear dictate decisions, a feeling of misalignment. Very likely down that road. the negative consequences of the first, interestingly enough, actually feeds back into the fear itself, because the negative consequence of going down this road is actually potentially never being heard

That was what the fear was. That’s what the consequence is. And that might seem obvious. Obviously, the road that you were afraid to go on has a fear. We’re talking about the fear. That must be the consequence, is the consequence of the fear.

but one way that is effective at breaking fears apart is by identifying what is a fear made of Because that fear, the fear of not being seen underneath the surface of it

if even that consequence occurs, but I took that road, it implies that I tried likely very hard. And if I have tried very hard to go down one direction, the implication is that I would have taken so much value-aligned, courageous, resilient authentic action that part of the consequence of not being heard would actually be a product of many months or years of authentic action

of skills developed, of stories accrued. So when I look at these two roads as dictated, as given or offered up by this fear

The choice is obvious, not from a perspective of, “Oh, I should just do hard things.” That’s, “I should just choose the one that’s more masochistic.” That’s not a good barometer of success. One of them has the product very likely of genuinely better adventures and stories and freedom and authenticity. And so it’s the more value-aligned direction

and I’m not here to decide how you live your life. But for me, when I make decisions, that tends to be the most influential factor

Would I be proud of this? Would this be a good adventure? Would it be worth the potential consequence? And the consequence in this scenario is actually not being heard. It’s putting out hundreds more of these videos and having the views be zero. could I deal with that consequence if on the road to that consequence

I was met with many dozens or hundreds of wonderful thoughts and stories and adventures

I think so. To me, the answer is yes

I’m Flint from iAlign. If you resonated with that fear or this message,

I would love if you dropped a like on this video, maybe shared it with one or two people, and follow along or subscribe to this channel. It would help alleviate my fear. Peace.