I found my fear!

And I found how I managed to ignore it for so many years

The path toward fearlessness is long.

After my recent trip to Peru and some honest conversations with friends, I uncovered a fear pattern I’ve carried for over fifteen years. It was quiet, almost invisible to me, but it shaped how I lived, worked, and dreamed. Now that I’ve seen it clearly, I want to share the story, because you might recognize it in yourself too.

Every trip brings me a new sense of myself

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If you have been following this publication, you know: the key to Deconstructing Fear is awareness. Not just naming fear, but seeing how it silently drives our choices. Once seen, it begins to dissolve, and in its place, freedom can emerge.

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My father, with his best intentions and love, made me feel that my personality wasn’t naturally worthy of success. To succeed, I had to become someone else. Someone more like him—serious, professional, controlled. There was a mold, and I didn’t fit. So, instead, I spent my life trying to prove that my way of doing things—creative, entrepreneurial, and service-oriented—was also valid.

I didn’t follow the “safe” path. I didn’t finish university. I became an entrepreneur. I followed my intuition. And I built things, systems, communities, and platforms that helped others. A part of me believed that by doing good work and having a positive impact, the world would meet me halfway. That income, stability, and support would come as a natural result of being useful.

And yes, I traveled, I connected with others, I explored the world in meaningful ways. But it often came at my own expense. I funded everything myself. I gave my time freely, assuming that generosity would open doors.

What I didn’t realize is that while I focused on the process, the purpose, and the impact, I was unconsciously neglecting the business side of my initiatives. I thought that part would sort itself out. If the heart were in the right place, the structure would follow.

It did—inconsistently. Just enough.

All along, uncertainty showed up. Especially in terms of money. And regularly, a tension developed inside me: I was doing good, helping others, even building systems that worked without me—and yet, I wasn’t stable. I wasn’t fully free. I found myself asking, “What am I missing?"

Some people saw my way of working as a weakness. I met a few bullies who tried to diminish what I do, and their efforts echoed something I had heard long ago: you are not enough as you are. There is the fear pattern.

My efforts and attempts to solve the ups and downs of entrepreneurship were often insufficient, not because I lacked ideas or discipline, but because I consistently prioritized my impact. I told myself: “It’s better to have a positive impact than to spend too much time building business models that might fail.”

That mindset slowly distanced me from another part of myself—the one with business ambition. Without noticing, I began sacrificing parts of my own dreams in the name of doing good.

I often say that “integration is what adults do,” and what I mean is that we learn to look back, recognize all the pieces of ourselves, and bring them together.

In the past few years, I started integrating the tech side of me with the social entrepreneur. Now it’s time to integrate the business side too.

I don’t need to keep proving myself anymore.
I just need to remember my dreams to see which ones I left behind, which parts of me have been ignored, and bring them back to enrich my experience of life.

As always, the past achievements and struggles are the perfect conditions for what is next for me.

And instead of thinking of my next business attempt as a test, I want to think of it as a decision. I will not forget to persist, because I know persistence is the key to achievement.

If any part of this resonates with you, I’d love to hear your thoughts. What dreams have you set aside while trying to prove yourself?

With love,

Jose.

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