Letting Fear Confine Me

I was reading in my Proverbs 31 bible study how fear impacts our decisions. If you know me,  then you know I am SUPER indecisive. Honestly, making decisions is awfully stressful to me and I will try everything to let someone else make the decision for me. I hate it. Absolutely hate it.

Ironically, I’m also reading “Make It Happen” which brought to my attention which is something I have known, but I let my fears hold me back.

You see I’ve been struggling with this whole blogging thing lately. I don’t want to just share updates on my life. Interesting for me, but not always for you. You don’t really get anything out of it. I want to dig a little deeper and write about things that matter a little more than what I did on a Saturday afternoon.

Content is not the problem. On my Google Drive I have a document dedicated to blog post ideas and it’s full. Overflowing with awesome topic ideas. Some are about CrossFit. Some about being a 20 something. The majority get a little personal, but good. A good personal and that’s what I want.

I ask myself why I haven’t written about those topics yet. They’ve been sitting in my idea document for months. But I know the answer. Because I’m afraid. It means I have to be vulnerable. It means I have to be real about things that I struggle with. It means I have to take a risk. And that’s a little scary.

So where does fear come into this? Fear is what’s holding me back. And I’m tired of fear having such a strong grip on my life. It’s held me back from way too much and the blogging field is only one of those things.

In “Make It Happen” Lara Casey says: Many times, we deeply desire a change in our lives, but we fear that change might shake things up. We fear upsetting the status quo, causing trouble we are not prepared for. … But there is a way out.

As I wrote out some of my fears, many of them struck chords with what I quoted from Lara Casey above. Here are some of mine:

Fear makes me care too much about what people will think of me.

Fear makes me want to stay “inside the box” when I really want to be “outside the box”.

Fear makes me want to meet people’s expectations of myself rather than what I expect of myself.

Fear makes me choose security rather than taking a risk for what I really want to be doing.

Fear makes me think that I will never measure up to the people in creative fields who inspire me.

Lara Casey’s mentions in “Make It Happen” that you can also fear success. I hadn’t thought of it that way, but when I did I realized I do have a few success related fears.

I fear success because it means more people could be watching me and what I’m doing.

I fear success because it means there is more room for failure.

Now that I identified some of my fears what’s next? I’ll let Lara do the speaking. 

Lara says: When you get honest about what’s holding you back, you open yourself to good change. Little by little, you exchange fear for a life of faith–a life where fear does not rule you but rather motivates you to dive deeper. . . . Find freedom by loving God and surrendering all your fears to Him. Then what previously was scary will no longer be scary-because you will have met your fears and given them over to God, trusting in the fact that God is God and He is leading you to where you need to go.

So this post is the first step in moving past those fears. Writing them out has helped me recognize those areas where fears infiltrates me and confines my growth. Fear is keeping my blog at this unexciting area. Fear is preventing my dream job from every happening. Fear is making the secure life easier to have than the creative life I desire. Fear is keeping me from writing what I really want to write about. I’m now conscious of my fears and can work on the surrendering part which isn’t so easy either. So to fear I say #ByeFelicia. Now I’m off to start working on this lovely Friday!

Do you have fears that confine you?

How do you move past them?