What would you do if you weren’t afraid?

Do you ever look back on times in your life and the decisions you have made and reflect on how your life might have been different if you had chosen differently.?

What would have happened if you had asked the person that you had a crush on out for a date?  What would your career be like if you had accepted that out of town promotion?  If you had taken out the loan to start that business, might you have been your own boss by now?  If you had not ignored the warning signs could you have prevented the heart attack?

Often the decisions we look back on with regret are decisions we made based, at least in part, on fear.  Fear causes us to miss opportunities, to avoid dealing with problems, and often prevents us from moving toward our goals.

We may fear failure, loss, embarrassment, defeat, or the need to face a situation we would rather not face.  We may simply fear change.

Most of us like consistency in our lives.  We tend to want to avoid change.  Change, of course, is inevitable and if we do not change, we become extinct! 

Often, we are uncomfortable with taking risks.  Few rewards come without some risk.

Being proactive involves anticipating changes, evaluating risks, and then making decisions accordingly.  We can then make decisions that move us in the direction of our goals.  This applies to both one’s personal and professional life.  Denying or fearing change does not avoid the challenges the changes bring; it only leads to putting off action until challenges become problems which become crises.  Avoiding risk does not prevent loss, in some cases it intensifies it.

Kenneth Blanchard and Spencer Johnson ask an important question in their book, “Who Moved My Cheese”: “What would you do if you weren’t afraid?”

If we give this some thought, we will probably answer something to the effect: “I would do the thing I want to do.  I would deal with the situation.  I would solve the problem.  I’d adapt to the change.”

When we realize that it is fear that is keeping us from acting in our best interest, we can then face the fear head-on.  We can ask ourselves “How would I act if I let go of the fear”?  When we make a conscious choice to overcome fear, we take control of our lives.  It has been said that at the end of our lives we will not regret the things we tried and failed at as much as we will regret those situations where we were afraid to try.

 Dale Carnegie once said, “Do the thing you fear to do and keep on doing it… that is the quickest and surest way ever yet discovered to conquer fear”.

What are your goals?  What is keeping you from those goals?  What would you do if you weren’t afraid?