It's indeed very motivating to read/hear such things. Still, there is always this underlying fear of failure that stays present, and this fear is somehow diffic

It's indeed very motivating to read/hear such things. Still, there is always this underlying fear of failure that stays present, and this fear is somehow difficult to overcome. After all, of all the dreams people have, of all the people working their way toward their dreams, how many are actually succeeding? We can't really deny that for some case, regardless of the effort put together, it can/will still fail. From this fear, the rest kind of snowball; you are afraid to fail, therefore you do all you can to not fail, you stay realistic about the situation, you even expect failures [1]. I do find all this very inspirational, but also difficult to apply altogether when in a realistic or even negative state of mind. The first smallest failure will be a reason to give up, to lose motivation. The points mentioned by Will Smith in the video the author linked could be applied one at the time to eventually reach a point where these fears can be put aside, almost forgotten, and all the rest could follow, slowly built by placing one brick at the time. Maybe the thoughts are mixed up, or I don't understand it the way the author meant to explain it, but I see that those two HN threads are linked, but almost opposite. Will Smith states that having a Plan B distracts us from Plan A. Expecting failure ahead is preparing those Plan B. [1]http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4897467 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4897467