Very true for me personally. I built a small company with a partner that was doing low-six figures annually. I bought him out and was running the show. And on a weekly basis, I was scared to death that it was luck, a fluke, that I couldn't replicate it if it all fell apart.

It made me shake in my boots, be overly cautious. What if it was just dumb luck? What if the wheels came off? When I set down to put my second company together, and it succeeded, it was like a huge weight off my shoulders. It's like - okay, you drop me in a foreign country without speaking the local language, clothes on my back, and $20 in my pocket, and I'll be back within a couple years.

I can't say exactly what it is, but I think the idea of having something you don't "deserve" (or couldn't get back) is fundamentally really scary to people. You see the same pattern with people dating someone they perceive out of their league, and you especially see it with corrupt political leaders. For me, not knowing if I'd made it or gotten lucky would haunt me on perhaps a weekly basis until I did it again.

And now? If everything melted down, I'd go hang out on the beach and read some books for a bit, then jump back in the saddle after I got sick of reading or beachlaying. It's a much better feeling than wondering if it was dumb luck.