If there was anything in the world that could make me lose sleep (I haven’t found it yet, late nights means sleep comes pretty easily) it would be beginnings. Beginning projects, beginning businesses, beginning client work — every color and stripe of professional beginnings.

The problem with beginnings is that you don’t know anything. You’re blind, deaf and dumb to the future. When you build a site or take on a client, everything from that point forward is a question mark. Will the project succeed? Will you get paid? Was the proposal representative of the work? Will anyone actually care?

These are unanswerable questions, and for control freaks like us they are terrifying. If you let it play out for too long in your mind, these questions can be crippling.

How do you fight the overwhelming sense that you are no longer in control of your destiny.

Trust yourself and do the work.

Remember that this uneasiness is what you signed up for, and that it’s the only thing that makes success worth it. What you sense is why most people never strike out on their own, and why doing anything great is so hard. What you’re feeling is Risk, and the only thing you can do is smile the reaper down and keep working.

There is a point in every project that you will either succeed or fail. That point is coming whether you like it or not, and no amount of fretting is going to help. The second you can get over the lie that you can worry your way to victory is the second you’ll start working your way to it.

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