The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.

Fear of error is itself expensive, and it charges you every day rather than once. The cost is invisible: things not attempted, questions not asked, work kept in draft. Someone who makes a mistake loses an afternoon; someone who spends years avoiding all mistakes loses the years. Caution feels like protection while it is quietly narrowing the size of a life.

Count what you did not try last month because you might have got it wrong. If the list is long, choose the least dangerous item on it and get it wrong on purpose this week. The recovery is usually faster and duller than the imagined version.