What if?

What if? What if I fail? What if they leave? What if I lose? What if they laugh? What if???? We all have those times when doubt fills us with trepidation. When doubt clouds our vision. We want to do something, but we begin to doubt our abilities. We begin to wonder what "they" will say. We begin to wonder what if I fail? We begin to wonder what if they laugh? We have all sorts of feelings and thoughts that stop us from moving ahead. Some people have more "what if" moments than others. And those moments actually paralyze them. It stops them from moving forward. When you are paralyzed you can't move, and that is exactly what happens. You don't move forward.

You are so afraid of what could happen that you just do nothing. I have been there. Wanting to move forward, wanting to try something, but that little voice in my head would play that same familiar song "what if..." What if you put it out there and it fails, or they laugh, or they talk about you? So I would do nothing. Time would pass and it would go back to the list of things I wanted to do.

But after years of being stuck in a holding pattern, one day I decided that it just didn't matter anymore. I was tired of living my life, or rather not living my life because I was stuck in "what if" land. I decided that living my life on my terms was more important than what "they" would say. and you know what happened? A whole lot. I started following my heart. Doing the things I had been dreaming of doing. You know what I found out? First of all sometimes we are too busy thinking about what others might say and actually others are not thinking that much about us at all. Really we are just not that important in the grand scheme of things. People have their on stuff. Now there will be some nosey busy bodies, but who cares about them? I realized that I wanted it more than I cared what other people thought. I made the decision that if it was not going to hurt me or someone else, if it was not going to embarrass my mom, son or grandsons then I was going for it. Here are the questions I ask myself when the "what if's" get busy in my head.

1. Is the thing I want to do important to me?

2. Is what I want to do more important to me than what "they" might say about it?

2.Will doing it cause harm to me or someone else?

3. Is it legal?

Your answers will help you to determine if this is something that you should do. I find that the more I think about what will satisfy me and the less I think about the "what if's" my life has become fuller.