I was talking with a friend the other day and mentioned several of the projects that I have rolling around in my head that I am thinking about moving forward on.   Some are music related, others are not. All are ambitious.  His response confused me a little until I realized that the way he looks at things are pretty much the way most people look at such things. You see, he was concerned that I would start a project and that it would overwhelm me and then I would have to abandon it and possibly hurt the other people involved in it. I see the validity of his point.

But even more, I see the reason most important projects never get off the ground. Fear. Fear of failure. Fear of lack of funding. Fear of lack of personnel. Fear of lack of adequate space. Fear of lack of knowledge. Fear of looking stupid. Each one is legitimate. Each one is a very real fear. Each and every one can be  the silent killer of many a project before it even has a chance to expose itself, much less attempt to come to fruition.

I think that this may be the very reason that many noble causes never sees the light of day; leadership that backs down in the face of fear instead of facing it head on. I can hear some of you now, those fears are real.  I grant you that. They are real. But they are also tameable.

You see, I don’t have a problem of letting go of a project once it is under way. I’ve always been able to find someone to take the reins so that I can look to new projects. Many people are willing to step up and lead once a project is under way. The real problem is getting past the fear of starting a new project.

I face this in my music as well. When I want to start a new piece of music and see all the empty staves and it is somewhat daunting.   All those doubts and fears are hiding in the background. “Will anyone listen to it?” “Will anyone like it?” “Will I be able to finish it?” I’ve learned to treat it all as noise. It really is just background noise. Noise that if you pay attention to it will stop you in your tracks and keep you from moving forward.

I will grant you that some projects, upon examination and study, should probably be stopped before they get started, but project ideas are like mustard seeds and number of them are going to fall in fertile ground and grow into something beautiful if given the chance.  We should never allow fear to be the deciding factor into whether we sow our ideas or not.

Just think of how much we could all accomplish if we could just treat all those fears as noise. I know that there are going to be some projects that aren’t going to work out; maybe some projects that will run their course and the peter out. But that’s life. I have come to accept that fact that the one thing worse that failure is regret at never having tried.   Maybe I should tack that on my wall.