And my fear of failure has been lifelong and deep. If you are what you do- and I think my parents may have accidentally given me this idea- and you do poorly, what then? It's over; you're wiped out. All those prophecies you heard in the dark have come true, and people can see the real you, see what a schmendrick you are, what a fraud.

One writer I know tells me that he sits down every morning and says to himself nicely, It's not like you don't have a choice, because you do-- you can either type or kill yourself.

This menagerie - it was part of my being repented - to show up places where I might have been afraid, like the zoo or a marriage.

You need to trust yourself, especially on a first draft, where amid the anxiety and self-doubt, there should be a real sense of your imagination and your memories walking and woolgathering, tramping the hills, romping all over the place. Trust them. Don't look at your feet to see if you are doing it right. Just dance.

So I'd start writing without reining myself in. It was almost just typing, just making my fingers move. And the writing would be terrible.

Heretics must believe. More than anyone else in an organization, it's the person who's challenging the status quo, the one who is daring to be great, who is truly present and not just punching a clock who must have confidence in her beliefs. Can you imagine Steve Jobs showing up for the paycheck? It's nice to get paid. It's essential to believe.

People settle. They settle for less than they are capable of.

The challenge is to focus on the work, not on the fear that comes from doing the work.

The next time you catch yourself being average when you feel like quitting, realize that you have only two good choices: Quit or be exceptional. Average is for losers.

Eye contact, all by itself, is enough to throw your lizard brain into a tizzy. Imagine how scary it must be to set out to do something that will get you noticed, or perhaps even criticized.

The connected economy of ideas demands that we contribute initiative. And yet we resist, because our lizard brain, the one that lives in fear, relentlessly exaggerates the cost of being wrong.

If you seek to become indispensable, a similar question is worth asking: "Where do you put the fear?" What separates a linchpin from an ordinary person is the answer to this question.