I really like this post. There are multiple things going on here, so I try to unpack each individually. Hopefully this helps you. If not, call the police. (Just kidding, please don’t the police.)

Anyways: I think the first thing to notice is that you’re aware of this fear of failure and you’re ready to do something about it. That’s a huge step and many people don’t even take that. So good job!

Second, there’s always a resistance when you start something new. You’ve never done a course before? You can bet it can feel strange and uncomfortable. Especially when putting together a course typically requires multiple skills: speaking, teaching, editing, design, camera presence, leadership, etc. These skills rarely come to people naturally but they need to be acquired through practice and that practice can feel painful. But step by step that training starts to pay off. Don’t be too hard on yourself and don’t try to learn everything at once. Break it down into compartments and little steps. Not everything at once. There’s nothing wrong with you. What you’re going through is normal, and happens to almost everybody.

When I was in the military, I had an assignment to teach others how to assemble, handle, and clean a gun in a safe way. The problem was that I had never seen that gun, I’m not a “gun person”, and I only had 24 hours to learn how it use myself. Next day would be showtime. I would teach everything about the gun to multiple groups throughout the day. Yikes. Not surprisingly when the next day came, my impression still was that I knew almost nothing about the gun but I thought I had to go out and teach them about it anyway. After all, this was the military and I had really no other choice. To my surprise, it went really well. What I thought was “almost nothing” was more than enough for my fellow soldiers. And the officers were pretty happy as well in my gun training.

So I think it’s important to recognize that what may seem obvious or stupid to you, might be really interesting and new to others. Others likely don’t see you the way you do.

Another thing you can do is to write down the worst things that can happen. I’m serious. Take a piece of paper and write down, in detail, what are the actual things you think will happen if all goes to hell. After that you can think how you could reverse the worst outcomes or what you could do to return back to square one. Usually, the worst things that can happen are not that big, and the outcomes are typically easily reversible.

Finally, you can think what’s the cost of inaction. What’s the cost of this fear you have? You might focus on the possibility that if all goes to hell, you have a price to pay. But have you considered what’s the price to pay if you do nothing? Today, sweeping snow off your car in the morning feels like an annoying chore, but in 4 days when there’s extra 2 feet of snow, it will turn from a simple chore into a nasty project. Inaction has a cost too.

The reason why your post resonates with me is that I battle with this all the time, too. I’m working on producing a cartoon series here on Steemit. I want to do something unique, something that truly stands out. Something that has never been done here before. And I can worry about the minute details, like post title structure until the cows go home. But eventually, I need to put it out there. In my mind, I’m thinking I need to have the project perfect (or good enough) before I put it out there. But it doesn’t work like that. It works the opposite way. By putting stuff out there regularly is the only way to get better at it. It’s fairly hard to learn how to swim, to have sex, or to fall in love – just by reading about it. We might get our hearts broken, that’s part of the process. Be eventually, we learn how to stay afloat. Hope this helps! And please don’t call the cops.