Be Afraid And Do It

I'll be 40 next year...and I'll say that in all of my near-40 years of living, I rarely (if ever) went into a scary situation that was as bad as I'd thought it would be. What made these scary situations REALLY scary was my own mind. My imagination didn't match reality, and my imagination scared me much more than reality did.

Whatever you are scared of probably doesn't compare to reality. The worst case scenario in your mind may never come your way, and even if it did, the experience would most likely not be as bad as you think.

The worst nightmare of every Prius owner is to have the hybrid battery go bad. Those batteries could range from $3,000 to $5,000 brand new. When those batteries go dead, you CANNOT drive that car. So once you buy a Prius, especially a used one, you simply have to pray that your battery would last for a very, very long time. Of course, if you're rich, buying a new hybrid battery would be nothing more than going into a dollar store.

So, about six months of buying my used Prius, my hybrid battery goes bad. Now we were faced with either selling it or paying a hefty fee for somebody to fix it -- which you could do instead of buying a whole new battery. But I opted for Option C: fix the thing myself. The actual experience of fixing that battery was more pleasant than dreadful, and I felt so empowered after I accomplished the task! My worst fear about the Prius came true, but the experience of dealing with this situation was nowhere as bad as I thought it would be.

Whatever it is that you're scared of, just imagine that the REALITY would be more manageable than you thought it would be. Or just imagine that whatever you're scared of may NEVER happen.

Count on just ONE hand how many times your worst fears came true. You can't THINK about it. You have to do it quickly and smoothly. Losing a very important job, losing a loved one, getting a disease, etc., are among people's worst fears. If any of these have actually happened to you, then you would quickly remember them. But if you really had to think about it, then most likely you never had any of your worst fears come true.

Now, count on just ONE hand how many of your worst fears that DID come true that you were able to handle better than you thought you would. Again, you can't think about it.

Fear is powerful enough to stop you in your tracks. It's strong enough to keep you from reaching your full potential. For many of us, we will never in our life time do what we dream about because of fear. Just imagine knowing that you're entering the final days of your life and realizing that everything you were scared of never happened.

I think about a parable that Jesus told about the talents. A man gave three of his servants a certain amount of talents (or money) so that they could invest them and make more money. The first person doubled his investments and was greatly rewarded. The second person doubled his investments and was greatly rewarded. The third person, however, did NOTHING with his investments because...well...he was scared. He was scared that his master would take all of his profits that he made with his hard work. So, he just gave his master back his money.

How did the master responded? He called his servant a "wicked and lazy" servant. Then the master told his servant that if he was that scared, he should have AT LEAST put the money in a bank to collect interest. Nope, the servant didn't even do that. But had the servant disregarded his fears and invested the money, he would have been greatly rewarded along with his fellow co-workers.

See, fear will keep you from better things. Whatever it is that you're scared of, acknowledge it and go forward with your plan. The worst that could happen is that if things don't go your way, you'd at least know. The best that could happen is that things would go MUCH BETTER than you thought.

Right now, you're held captive by fear, which is how fear works. It holds you down and keeps you from doing anything. What if...just what if you get greatly rewarded by doing the thing you fear? What if you've opened many doors because you disregarded your fear? What if only good things happened because you ignored your fears? You could spend your time asking how many things could go wrong, but you could spend that same amount of energy asking how many things could go right.