All creators, from writers to painters to entrepreneurs and team leaders, eventually come face-to-face with mounting waves of fear and uncertainty. It's unavoidable. How you handle these powerful influences, though, often determines the difference between glorious success and demoralizing defeat.

Properly understood and harnessed, fear and uncertainty can become fuel for creative genius rather than sources of pain, anxiety, and suffering.

But when misunderstood, mishandled, and avoided, they quickly become forces of creative and emotional paralysis and destruction, turning the seeds of great art, business, and innovation into creative misses and outright failures.

Drawing on extensive case studies and research, Fields shares a set of detailed personal practices and environmental changes that can not only humanize the creative process, but also allow individuals and teams to stay more open to opportunity and play a bigger creative game.

Jonathan Fields is a lawyer-turned-serial entrepreneur, AdAge Power 150 blogger, marketing consultant, speaker, and author. His last book, Career Renegade, was named a Top 10 Small Biz Book by Small Business Trends. A contributor to PsychologyToday.com and HuffingtonPost.com, he writes about entrepreneurship, innovation, lifestyles, and marketing at JonathanFields.com and TribalAuthor.com.