What do you spend most of your time thinking about? Is it “what if” or what is?
What I’m getting at is a certain mental habit we’re all susceptible to at one time or another in our lives: dealing with the future and not the present. It’s “what if” vs. what is.
This may surprise you – but many of the problems we d in our lives are not created by someone else. Not your boss, not your spouse, not your friends. Many of them were created by you by concentrating too much on the “what if’s.”
How do I know this? I’ve been there. For many years in my life, I was in the habit of dealing with the “what if’s.”
I thought I was being intelligent. I thought I was being careful. I thought I was covering all the bases for any given decision or situation.
I thought that by considering all the “what if’s,” I could make a better decision. Do you know what I found out? The “what if’s” never came true.
Not once.
What I was doing was playing God, in a sense. I believed if I had mapped out all the possibilities before making a decision, I could make a better one. I could avoid the outcome I was most afraid of: failure. What I eventually found out was that I could never, ever cover all of the possibilities in any given situation. No one can, no matter how many “what if’s” you devise.
What I eventually learned was to come from a place of staying true to myself. A place of believing in myself. Of trusting myself. Of being honest with myself.
Dealing with the “what if’s” is really fearing what we think might come true, instead of what really is true. Making a decision based on the “what if’s” is one that is ignoring our real, authentic selves. We’re fearing failure. We’re fearing falling down. We’re fearing looking bad. In the end, if you’re coming from a place of being honest and real, you cannot fail. Read the rest of this entry »
