There is nothing like success to make you unsure of yourself. Perhaps the greatest obstacle to making a go of a project is the process of doing something so well that you never do anything else for fear of failure. If a writer makes it to the best-seller list the first time out, every novel to follow will be judged by the first. If a baseball player gets a home run the first time at bat, every time he or she comes up to the plate, the stands will be judging the performance in light of that first hit. If a movie director's first film is a box office smash, it's going to be hard to produce a second film that will do as well.

It sounds crazy, but it is true. It is safer and more assuring to work your way up than being a star from the moment you start. The young man was called into the boss' …