Do you carry a constant background fear that something could go wrong and derail the thing you’ve built?
Not the immediate problem staring you in the face that you’ll know you’ll solve.
But an ever present, barely conscious, worry that the future has some calamity lined up for you? No? Just me then.
I joke. I know you feel it. It's that feeling before you fall asleep. When you wake up at 3am. When your mind drifts for a second and lands on:
“This is great but if I stop pushing, it’ll all disappear.”
This is the life of anyone with their own business. Mentally exhausting...
Employees outsource uncertainty. They place faith in the assumed certainty of salaries, contracts, promotions, and employers. And if they need to, they’ll get another job.
Business owners can’t.
No revenue is guaranteed. No business grows forever. No future is guaranteed.
You live with uncertainty every day.
For context…
Yesterday I woke up surrounded by love, doing work I genuinely care about, attracting ideal clients, with momentum in the business. And still I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was going to go wrong.
Objectively, things are good. So why the fear?
Because I don’t think entrepreneurs fear failure itself.
I think we fear the imagined shame, guilt and loss attached to it.
Of letting people down. Of losing what we’ve built.
Of not being who we believe ourselves to be.
So I stopped for 30 minutes and thought about every time I’ve leapt two-footed into uncertainty. I thought about every mistake, setback and cause for regret, and asked myself:
"Is there compelling evidence that I’m someone who won't be able to handle this?"
No.
Everything led me here.
And then it dawned on me:
The price of autonomy is uncertainty.
Uncertainty isn’t a flaw in entrepreneurial life. It’s the cost of freedom.
The challenge isn’t eliminating it. It’s learning not to let it own me. It's learning to love it.
