Fear almost never introduces itself honestly. In my experience it has never once turned up and said: I am afraid of this and that is why I am not doing it. What it does instead is arrive dressed as something respectable. It presents as timing, as prudence, as being realistic, as wanting a bit more data before committing. 

I have watched myself do this well enough to have developed some suspicion of my own reasoning. The tell is not in the argument, which is usually perfectly sound, but in the timing of when the argument appeared. If the case for waiting arrives only after the opportunity becomes real, and would have carried no weight the week before, it is worth asking what changed. Usually nothing changed except that the thing stopped being hypothetical. The other tell is asymmetry: I find I have thought carefully about the cost of acting and not at all about the cost of not acting, which will be paid just as surely and is simply less visible because nothing happens.

The test I use is a small one. Imagine that the fear is gone, entirely, and then ask what you would do. The answer usually arrives immediately, which is itself informative, because a decision genuinely driven by strategy does not change when you remove the fear. If it does change, then you have learned that you were not reasoning; you were rationalising a conclusion fear had already reached. So, as a reflection for today: what would you do if you were not afraid? And what is that answer telling you about the reasons you have been giving?