Fear Almost Kept Me from Making the Best Decision EVER!

Have you ever had a fear so strong that it kept you from doing anything? As a result you go to extraordinary measures to make sure the fear doesn’t come true. You keep running away from it, but it’s always in the back of your mind.

Contrast that with the following: bad experiences from your past cause you to reflect about what happened and what went wrong. You set goals for the future to inspire you to make the necessary changes. Through work and regular evaluation you make progress towards your goals and that inspires you to keep moving forward.

I Almost Missed Out

I have experienced both of these mindsets in my life. One of the most important examples was about getting married. I was super nervous about the type of husband I would be and the type of marriage my then fiancé and I would make together. There are so many doom-and-gloom statistics out there about marriage. How were we supposed to overcome the odds?

It turned out that my wife had similar concerns. We both loved each other, and after alot of prayer and conversations we knew we wanted to be together. We took the leap and got married. We’ve both had to make changes and be deliberate about what we do to strengthen our relationship. But it has been wonderful and the best investment of time and energy I’ve ever (or will ever) make.

But what if we had let our concerns and fears drive us apart and prevented us from getting married? We’d have both missed out on a great thing.

This kind of thing happens all the time. Not just in marriage, but in all aspects of life. We let our fears prevent us from doing the things that will bring the most happiness, fulfillment, and joy.

Running from our fears is paralyzing. We are always anxious about our fears coming true. They loom over us and prevent us from being truly happy.

In contrast designing and running towards our goals is an empowering experience. It’s exhilarating to make progress towards something that’s important to us. It doesn’t have to be huge progress. Sometimes baby steps in the middle of a challenging goal is more powerful than big steps when the going is easier.

Sometimes motivating goals come from fears that we reframe to think about differently. It was like that for my wife. Instead of worrying “can we make our marriage last?”, we have set out to see how great we can make it.

Getting married was an act of faith and trust that God would help us. We were still nervous about how it would work out. In the first few months of being married, we realized how much we could do to make our relationship stronger. We worked together to make it fulfilling and happy for both of us. Our mindset changed from fear to a goal to keep getting better. That change of perspective has made a HUGE difference in how we handle things as a couple.

Do you have fears that haunt you or goals that motivate you? How can you reframe your fears into goals? I’d love to hear what you think.