Hopes or Fears?

We really have two choices; to go after our hopes or listen to our fears.  Therefore, our life is about deciding whether our fears or our hopes matter most.  Sadly, too often in life we are governed by fear rather than hope.  And sometimes we don’t even realize it or are willing to admit it, but what we decide is not based on our goals, dreams, and aspirations but rather on our fears, concerns, and worries.  We allow these fears to lead us through life rather than taking charge of our own outcomes and destiny.  As you can imagine, living this way never leads us to the kind of life we’d like to have. 

Allowing fear to direct our life leads to so many negative things such as low satisfaction with life, low energy, a feeling of having little or no control, and even eventually remorse and regret.  We don’t want this to be us!  So, learning to make decisions based on hope and what we want most in life is how we ought to live.  This of course is not easy as so many of us have become accustomed to making decisions out of fear.  For this reason, changing our course will require deliberate effort, as well as some patience and time.  When we are faced with an important decision, or really any decision at all, we need to ask ourselves am I choosing this because it is truly what I hope for in life or is out of fear?  If we are able to begin doing this even once out of every 10 decisions it will give us a good starting place.  And putting forth this effort will eventually grow to 1 out of every 8 decisions then 1 out of 5 then hopefully, eventually 9 out of 10 decisions we are faced with.  As we begin this process, we can start to live out of hope! 

And believe me, I know that making decisions based on our hopes and dreams can, is, and will be scary at times.  What we need to remember during these moments of uncertainty is that we have only one life to live, so the risk is worth it.  Living a life where we never even tried to live our dreams, one where we realize nearly all of our decisions were governed by fears will only lead to serious disappointment.  The time is now to make our hopes matter more than our fears and the only way to do that is through our actions and choices.    

So what is controlling you and how are you living your life?  Eventually all of us decide whether our fears or hopes matter most to us.  I hope more of us will begin today to choose our hopes!