"There have been plenty of times where I've wanted to apply for a job that I just didn't think I was good enough for, or that there would be other people applying for it that would cream me in so many ways possible in skills. So the course of action would just be to not bother."
Oof. That's exactly what I needed to read. I hear a lot from my wife that I don't reach because I'm afraid of failure. It's true.
Yep. That was a big one for me too. Fear of failure, loss of control. Because to fail then you lose autonomy and have to let the world judge. This was a big parent-issue thing for me. I solved it by learning to fail. I learned that at first to succeed -- I needed to know how to fail