You control the outreach, never the reply or the result, so judge yourself on whether you reached out and how well you swung.
The idea
You can't control whether someone replies, says yes, or ever becomes business. You can control what you send and how well you send it. In my coaching we wrote it as an equation: ACTIVITY + EXTERNALITIES = OUTCOMES. The activity is yours. The externalities (their inbox, their year, whatever they're quietly dealing with) aren't. So grade yourself on the activity. Babe Ruth had limited say over whether a hit cleared the fence. He could only swing as hard as he could.
How to do it
Before you write, ask whether you actually need a response. Often you don't.
Decide what you want them to feel when it arrives, and write for that.
Try the trick a mentor taught me when I was a young CEO chasing investors: assume the answer is no. It relaxes you. Then write the best message you can.
Send it and treat it as launched. You can't call it back, so stop refreshing your inbox.
Example
A friend went completely dark on me for three years. I kept sending my quarterly friends update, a birthday note every year, the occasional "thinking of you," with zero expectation. Then he resurfaced. He'd been going through a lot, drafting and deleting replies the whole time. His silence had nothing to do with me. I couldn't control his timeline. I could control whether I was still there when he surfaced.
Script
Ask yourself before you send:
"What do I want them to feel when they get this from me?"
"Do I need a response to this?"
"Can I ignore my fears about what might or might not happen, and focus on delivering the best outreach possible?"
Three Tricks to Press Send: Separate the action from the result: write the message before adding the recipient, say aloud you don't care what happens, or schedule the send.
The Control Inventory: List what you can't control and what you can, then put all your energy on the second list.
Second Thought, First Action: You can't control the first fearful thought about reaching out. You own the second thought and the first action.
When They Ghost: When someone stops replying, switch channels, gently name it, or let it ebb, and keep showing up with zero expectation either way.