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Separating fact from fiction

William Liao
1 min readJan 15, 2025

Lately, I’ve been starting my mornings processing my worries.

The first processing step is separating fact from fiction — what’s actually true about the thing I’m worrying about, versus what I imagine to be true.

More often than not this exposes that many of my worries are based on not-so reliable gut feelings.

For example, my infinitely wise gut says people will not think well of my work, but further reflection makes it clear that I don’t know that. Nor do I have any evidence to suggest that.

Critically — whether I worry about my work or not, or about anything else or not, the directive remains the same: I can only do my best and should focus on that.

Worries are not the enemy, we worry because we care.

Instead of exacerbating them by trying to push them away, take a moment acknowledge them and to reaffirm that the best thing you can do is focus on doing your best.

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William Liao
William Liao

Written by William Liao

Taiwanese American, daily blogger of ideas about impactful work in service of others, photographer (ephemera.photography)

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