Diagnosis: You and Fear

In working with my inaugural class of clients for The Power of Focus project, the biggest reports coming in from the field show that fear keeps rearing it’s ugly head.

“Am I doing this right?”

“How do I know if I’m doing this right?”

That old demon, fear is rearing it’s ugly head again, tyring to keep you from realizing your greatness.

The fact is, the only way to know if you’re doing anything right is by actually doing it! Otherwise, you’re not doing ANYTHING!

It struck a chord when I read Seth Godin’s blog this morning. Read Everything Is Not Going To Be Okay and you’ll understand what I mean.

We all walk around wondering, hoping and wishing for someone to tell us that we’re on the right path – and that we’re doing the right thing.

As moms, we’re especially vulnerable. I remember when I first brought my son home from the hospital (who’s now a teenager). I said to my friends, “I wish babies came with instruction manuals.”

I was met with comforting words and encoruagement that I was “going to be a great mom.” and that I “would know what to do instinctively.”

They were wrong.

I struggled and struggled at trying to figure out how to be a mom. It’s like pouring salt on a snail and watching him shrivel up. That’s how I felt each and every day of his young life. I wasn’t prepared for 2am feedings when I had to be to work the next day. I didn’t understand why I had to pay for a week of day care if teh kid was only there for three days. There was so much that was pretty much left to chance when my son was small that I began to feel like I was doing everything wrong.

So I came home, where my family offered a modicum of support.

Whether that was “the best” choice or not, I’ll never know, but it was the only one I felt I had at the time. Doing what you believe to be right in the moment is sometimes all you have to go on. Questioning that decsion only leads to indecision, stagnation, and more fear.

What happened when I returned? It was like being a child all over again – being told what to do and how I was doing everything wrong. I remember one of my aunts telling me my child would end up in prison if I kept on raising him the way I was.

Of course, that was before his diagnosis. Before the diagnosis, I was viewed as a horrible mother with a problem child. After the diagnosis, I was “doing the best I could in a situation with a special needs child”.

Funny how the dime turned, huh? I thought so, anyway.

So here’s your diagnosis: You’re doing the best you can in your given situation. Don’t let the unknowing, disapproving looks from family or friends screw with your brain. You’ll never know if what you’re doing is the perfect solution to any problem until the end of time, when you look back and assess the full value of the life you’ve lived. If you spend all your time now wondering, you’ll never live the life you were called to fulfill.

Fear likes to keep you in a space where it thinks you’re safe. Hey, you’re not dead yet, so you must be doing okay. That’s hogwash. Fear doesn’t understand that you need to take a step or a leap out of your “comfort zone” to be the person - the mom, the busness owner – you truly want to be. It only understands that you’re trying something new, something it hasn’t experienced before, and what if everything isn’t okay?

It won’t be okay. It will be uncomfortable at best and excruciatingly painful at worst. Just know it, accept it, and plow through. There’s fear in the doing, but most often, hen we come out on the other side of the doing, we are much better for the experience.