Fear and Humbleness…Obstacles in The Way of Success

“Oh no, I won’t go into that code; I am not that intelligent!”
“oh no, I don’t want to try this software…I don’t know what it will do to my machine!”
“Oh no, I can’t write such a unique blog post!”
“Oh no, I will not twiply to that celebrity…come on…he is a celebrity!”

These phrases kept chasing me for a long while in my life, and sometimes still does. It had the worst effect on my progress, I couldn’t move an inch forward; by a deep feeling I didn’t confront, I was afraid of failure, mixed with a feeling of negative humbleness.
But that was it, I couldn’t stay as a prisoner to these chains, and leave these cookies of success to people who might have less resources and powers.

Then, after realizing this fact and working against it, I am free! within months I have created this blog you are reading, started the open source project Bunian (small but learned a lot from it and in progress), delivered session in JorDev (and still contributing effectively), and preparing a new technical Arabic podcast (to be announced soon).

what helped me to do that:

• Make backup plans for everything you have paranoia about; backup your drive, use virtual machines, make a dummy blog…etc. This way you will not fear the change, the change which will possibly be the next big thing for you
• Don’t take it too serious; be cool about it, it’s not going to be the end of the world if it fails. Of course try your best and plan well, but beyond that you only have to take the step and try things out
• Aim high…but lower your expectations; the higher your expectations are, the more difficult accepting failure is, hence you will not try it out. so lower your expectations and prepare for the failure
• Try to find more reasons to do it, reasons that will only force you do well without the fear of failure. Joy is an example; I like writing and expressing my feelings/experience in words, so no matter how many subscribers there are, I keep posting to this blog (and no, I am not going to tell you how many, at least not right now :P)
• Think of all the great stuff you are going to miss because you fear loosing part of what you already have, and sometimes even less. What you are missing could be awesome! and this is not gambling, because you already control the bigger part of it, luck is only a part.
• Have confidence in your self, because you CAN be better, and the only ones who can’t get better are the ones who DON’T WANT to get better; that is the false modesty.
• People grow within the limits around them, widen the limits…and see how you will, automatically, grow to fill the space further
• Don’t be hasty, and grow larger bit by bit…one success leads to another.

These are the things I could think of when it comes to it, I still struggle; it’s a never ending battle with my self, but I hopefully I will not surrender, and I hope this will help others as well.
Finally, we are nothing and can achieve nothing without the help of God; do your best, then ask him for success, that’s the best prescription ever.