The same thing applies to me, and I am guessing to everyone. Doctors don't operate on their family for a reason.

Fear reduces your ability to think straight- and thinking straight is very helpful to perform tasks you are skilled at and receiving inspiration from your higher mind.

Further, and this may be even more important: It is much, much easier to keep your mind in one direction of operation: Sending or receiving.

If you have clarity of purpose, and you are asking someone a question who is in the zone, then that person's creativity may just flow.

If you are in the zone, and someone with clarity of purpose is asking you a question, then you can just let it flow and you will do great.

When you are both in one person, things get more muddled- you have to switch between sending and receiving a lot. Combine that with fear and you have diminished effectiveness.

Finally, there is the question of structure- the unmoving parts. As a creative consultant, you are used to buying yourself as many options as possible in order to work properly. What you are most likely not so aware of is that options have diminishing returns- Sea World found that one out the hard way when they figured out their sea horses were starving if they fed them too much- they endless chased down new kernels without ever catching one and died.

You have several options to move forward and resolve the dilemma.

(1) Increase your confidence- work on your fears and use auto-suggestive techniques to convince yourself of your own success.

(2) Increase your self-worth- work on your idea of yourself until you believe that only the best is good enough for you, both giving and receiving

(3) Find partners to bounce ideas- these can be imagined if you like

(4) Use creative limitation productively- be the man who knows exactly what he wants and what he doesn't. You don't need to bet on every horse. You don't have to follow industry best practices. You can bring in idiosyncrasy (a.k.a. brand identity). Decide on some principles and follow them to see where they lead you.

(5) Prioritize yourself - your work is the most important. Everything else can wait, just like when you're on someone else's deadline.

Interestingly- if you look at 1-5- those are exactly the skills required to run a successful business. They are overlooked by helpers of all kinds, and then those helpers wonder why they are not the business folks. Being good at these things is very, very hard.

The easiest way to do all five of these things automatically is to use the Haipule- a type of Hawaiian prayer that uses all four basic building blocks of the universe at once to perform your auto-suggestion, and, as such, is very, very effective.

1. Breathe and imagine energy flowing form the stars and the center to the earth through your naval, alternating your attention on the stars and at the center of the earth. This is called pikopiko and you perform it for energy, the first building block.
2. Speak a phrase carefully chosen to represent what you want. This is called an affirmation and you perform it for symbolism, the second building block.
3. Imagine yourself having what you want in a lot of detail. This is called a visualization and you perform it for experience, the third building block.
4. Perform gestures, a dance, or tasks relating to what you want. This is called ritual and you perform it for action, the fourth building block.

You do this all at once and you will achieve a drastic shift in your energy. I recommend to do it daily until you a couple of intense bouts of positive emotion, and for a few seconds throught your day.