I’ve heard it said before that if you wait until the perfect time to launch your own business, you’ll end up waiting forever. Entrepreneurship is a leap of faith. Sooner or later, you have to either take the plunge, or admit that business ownership just isn’t for you.

But if there’s no perfect time to launch a business, my timing might have been especially adverse.

It was the summer of 2008. Maybe you remember it. Financial markets were in full-blown meltdown, the fruit of what we retroactively call the Great Recession. People were losing their homes. People were losing their jobs. Politically, financially, and culturally, it seemed like everything had plunged into chaos.

For reasons I still can’t fully articulate, it seemed like as good a time as any to start my own writing and editing agency.

A few months after setting up shop, it dawned on me that I’d stumbled into a rather sweet spot. With companies trimming their in-house teams—letting go of copywriters, designers, and other creative folks—there was a real hunger for the kind of outsourced expertise my crew could bring to the table. I’d love to claim I saw this golden opportunity from day one, cool as a cucumber, but honestly, starting the business was—and still is—about wrestling with nerves and second-guessing myself.

Even so, as that journey rolls on, running my own show has schooled me in the art of keeping worry in check. It’s not about kicking fear to the curb entirely, but figuring out how to push ahead regardless, one steady step at a time.

Allow me to explain just four ways in which starting my own business taught me how to keep fear in check.

Learning Acceptance

One of the first things you figure out as a business owner is that not everything is within your control.

On the contrary, from broader market trends to interest rates to the complexities of choosing the ideal state for an LLC, there are countless aspects of business ownership over which you have no authority; no effective will.

Relinquishing control is one of the toughest things you’ll ever do, but over time it can also become one of the most freeing. In the earliest days of running my company, I invested far too much time fretting about the things I couldn’t control.

In the crucible of entrepreneurship, I’ve learned a little bit each day about all the fruitlessness and wasted energy that come with worrying about the things you can’t control. That’s helped me focus my attention not on fear, but on being a responsible steward of those things I can do to help my clients and to equip my employees each day.

Building Confidence

When you run a business, you have to make a million decisions each and every day.

Not all of my decisions have worked out the way I wanted them to. But many of them have. And my batting average gets a little better with each passing year, as my instincts are leavened with wisdom and experience.

Being able to make a decision, then either celebrate the outcome or at least take ownership of the misstep, has helped me to develop a real sense of confidence in what I do. And that’s a potent antidote to fear.

Cultivating Resilience

The truth is, I could write an entire article just recounting missteps and errors I’ve made. Accounts lost, and accounts that never should have been taken on. Bad hires. Unwise partnerships. Huge marketing expenditures with nothing to show for it.

But failure can be a powerful tutor, and one thing it’s taught me is that you can always pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start moving forward again.

Simply put, surviving a lot of missteps has taught me that I don’t have to fear failure. Yeah, it sucks. But it doesn’t have to be calamitous.

Embracing Creativity

My work is creative by its very nature. If a client hires me to write 50 articles on the same topic, but all of them have to be unique, well, that’s a real test of my imagination.

Engaging my creative side has been a powerful way to sidestep fear. It’s taught me that, even when I meet with rocky circumstances, there are usually some outside-the-box strategies I can use to sail through them, or at the very least shield myself and my company from undue damage.

Creativity, too, is an effective counterbalance to fear. And nothing will help you develop it like running a small business.

Keep Your Fears in Check

It’s okay to feel a little bit afraid about launching your own business. Heck, it’s okay to feel terrified. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it. Taking the leap may be the best thing you ever do for showing your fears who’s boss, and learning to be a more enterprising, creative, and resilient person.