We “overvalue performance,” as one psychologist put it, “and undervalue the self.” We’re afraid of being just okay at things. This is a trap. “For to permit yourself to do only that which you are good at,” writes the legal scholar Tim Wu, “is to be trapped in a cage whose bars are not steel but self-judgment.”

...[E]veryone has at least one fear that rules their life and limits their freedom... When you find it difficult to admit your fears, ask yourself a different question: Are you free? This question helped me uncover my fears one by one ... At a fundamental level, many of us fear finding out who we really are and what about ourselves we need to fix.