practice (n.) - Frequently repeated action; habitual performance.

I like to think of my work and efforts as a series of continual and endless daily practices, the aggregate of which constitutes a practice of itself. Each morning I wake up at the designated time and over my coffee write in my journal a list of my practices to attempt that day. These different practices generally fall in to 2 categories.

The first are routine and mostly open ended practices with no hard deadlines for goal achievement, these are what you might typically imagine when you think of a daily practice. Examples: Strength training, Chinese study, meditation, walking, journaling, etc. These practices are the ones I really enjoy and that I consider to be fundamental to my functioning as a human being, viz. they preserve my physical, emotional and psychological health and are selected and crafted to do just that.

The second types of practice are much more goal oriented and might, in many cases, fit very neatly under the umbrella term of "work". These typically have a deadline and some sort of stake riding on their successful completion. Examples: tasks in service of a personal project, tasks in service of a job, tasks in service of a business endeavor, a competition training regimen, etc. These are practices that are by their nature difficult to define, the work we do with an ends in mind generally is always changing. Even if you have had the same job for your entire adult life, the individual conditions of that job (the small details of the day to day execution of whatever task you may be employed to do) change on a day to day, and in some cases hour to hour, basis. These are practices I pursue not necessarily because I like them (though enjoyment and work are not and should not be mutually exclusive) but because I perceive them to be necessary to attainment of a goal.

Because of the inherent inconsistency of work-like practices they are much more difficult to enshrine in the sacred veil of routine and the application of discipline to their undertaking becomes much more challenging. Furthermore the existence of a stake, a real or perceived loss or gain coming as consequence of failure or success respectively, introduces an added complexity of fear.

Fear is the enemy

Within work the fear of failure can be and often is the primary challenge to action. In the case of a wage job, the simplest and most often employed strategy for overcoming fear is apathy, that is; as an employee it is often possible to avoid fear and stress by not caring or being generally not focused on the actual success of the business one is engaged in. I think this is a big contributing factor to the commonly antagonistic relationship between employers and employees. The "boss" may see their workers as unreliable and lazy, interested only in money. And the employee may see their boss as greedy, stingy and uncharitable, interested only in money. In a lot of cases both are probably correct and we're all just failing to realize that the problem is not that the other are bad people antagonizing us because they suck. The problem with jobs is that a lot of jobs are for bad business. Businesses that concern themselves only with money and disregard the humanity of their employees and customers. Nearly all corporate employment is like this because corporations are organized around maximization of profit, often sacrificing humanity and compassion in that pursuit. Even when the work is not degrading and the entity for which one is employed is not inhuman and greedy, apathy still comes into play but more subtly. In other words, you may care about the success of the business you work for, and you can feel troubled or stress when the business struggles or suffers a loss, but you can still get away with disregarding the challenge this situation implies and practice no self reflection as a result. Making no attempt to change your behavior in response to negative outcomes, shifts all responsibility for the problem and it's solution onto your subordinates or superiors depending on the situation. Even worse this apathetic habit of not reflecting causes you to stagnate and become a shadow of your potential. But there's no denying that it's easier to not care. By not caring why or in the former example how, the power of fear is dispelled and you can work with apathy. Being apathetic to your job is not necessarily a bad tactic. If you find yourself in a situation where you are forced to sell yourself to survive, then you absolutely should employ any means necessary to get through that, but you should be careful not to become complacent in this behavior, do not allow yourself to work apathetically for a long time finding small comfort in things that don't matter despite the fact that you don't care about what you do everyday. Instead constantly be looking for the exit and a life that allows you to never sell yourself but instead work on that which you find important and work that enriches you more than monetarily. If you fall into this trap it's because you've not overcome your fear, but you've shifted it. Your fear of failure at work that you've belayed with apathy has become your fear of failure doing what you actually care about, and now your stuck at some stupid job. Recognize that your inertia to remain at the job you hate and don't care about isn't a rational decision, it's actually just the fear you've kicked down the road. In the interest of remaining nuanced, having a shit job you hate doesn't make you a coward automatically. You may just be on the war path still and forced to make some compromise. Don't let that turn into apathy. Remember always that fear is the enemy and keep pushing.

Fear is the challenge

When one is engaged in their own work, viz. work they personally profit from and genuinely care about, it is no longer a viable strategy to be an apathetic worker. This is a challenge that must be overcome and not avoided. Overcoming fear of failure, in my experience so far, is most difficult the challenge to beginning and, importantly, continuing any meaningful endeavor. And the higher the stakes the greater the fear. There is only one method I've found for overcoming such fear and it is not a permanent remedy, but one that must be continually applied daily and even multiple times a day (a practice even), that is Rationality.

When fear takes hold and begins to creep into my thoughts about work and the practice demanded in that work the only way I've found to overcome it is with consistent meditation, rational thinking, planning and self talk.

Meditation

I have found that good place to start is with meditation. Taking time to be still and focus my mind I try to meditate every day, even if I'm not planning on doing any work that day.

Rational Thinking

After I've cooled off, I look deeply at the challenge of the work ahead of you and the fear of failure I feel. I consider the consequence of failure and what it will mean to fail and how it will affect me in my life and relationships. It's important that in this step I be rational and don't allow fear to warp reality or suddenly make the extremely unlikely a certainty.

Self talk

Next I start talking myself through the fear and steel myself against the consequences of failure. I've found developing a mantra for to be a valuable tool just about everything that comes out of David Goggins' mouth could be a good mantra for this. But my favorite lately has been

No project is ever complete, only abandoned.
The only true failure is never starting.

But a close second is

Who's gonna carry the boats?

Planning

Finally I make a plan for how I'm going to continue. Nothing spectacular, just an outline of everything I think I need to do to make my goal a reality. There's usually a lot more to do than I can imagine but it's good to have an idea.

Courage is a practice

This is a practice and it's important to treat it that way. I don't get bogged down in making sure I do it perfectly. I just try. This practice is like the warm up to a workout it's not important that you do it well, just that you do it consistently. So just like with working out. "Just do the damn warm up and the work out will come easy"

This intellectual and practical response to fear is difficult to practice and it's not as immediately relieving as apathy. But as I outlined above apathy is not a real option if your work really matters. For me at least, it gives me the courage to bear down and just get started on the work I'm afraid to fuck up and begin the practice of creation and failure teaches and nourishes me.