Your academic mentors invest their time in your future, so they want to see you succeed.
Your friends and loved ones care about your well being, so they want to see you succeed.
Your department invest equipment and resources on your training, so it wants to see you succeed.
But the real world has no accountability to you, so it doesn’t have to care about your success.
That’s a good thing because the real world only cares about actual good work. So put your ideas project out there, and let the world see. Send out an abstract, write a paper, propose a grant.
Whatever the outcome, you learn where you stand. It’s the market economy at work, and the academic equivalent of an open beta test.
So it’s not so much about putting forth your best work – you can’t always tell what “best” is.
It takes courage just to put forth work, and more so to let the others decide.