All posts tagged: fear of mistakes

Dealing with procrastination

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I am the king of procrastinators. I put things off, because I can’t or won’t make a decision. When it comes to buying an item, as my wife will attest, I am scared that a better deal might come along, so I just put it off. Procrastination is a real problem and it shows up at universities when students procrastinate about completing assignments often putting it off to the very last moment. Sometimes, they don’t complete them at all. I know of a very smart man who didn’t complete his university assignments and as a result never graduated. However, he went on to have a very successful, I repeat, very successful professional career. So, the issue wasn’t ability. Typically, most blame procrastination on a time management problem or perhaps laziness. People are just not managing their times properly. And some universities even offer time management advice for their students. However, a recent study by psychologists Timothy Pyschyl and Fushcia Sirois has concluded that procrastination is not about time management, but rather an unwillingness to deal …

The Armour of Perfection

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I still find myself afraid to make a mistake. I don’t like looking foolish or weak in the eyes of others and in the end I find myself lost in a forest of perfection, feeling small, insignificant and unworthy as I look at people who have their act together. For so long the message of the world has been that doing everything right will make you happy and that true happiness lies in doing and saying the right thing all the time.  As Koren Motekaitis says, “Chasing perfection is exhausting” because we think the approval of others will make us feel better about ourselves. It won’t, because we can never be perfect. The opposite is what happens though, shame shows up when we make a mistake and fall short of our hopes to be truly loved and accepted. It puts us under pressure to be someone we are not. We work so hard at not being judged by others and end up feeling worse instead of better as we fall short again and again. We …

Stepping past your fears

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For years I have been controlled by what other people thought of me. Over the past few weeks I have enjoyed watching YouTube videos of people dancing up stairs.  I had a notion to try this myself but wondered what others would think of a 60 year-old-woman dancing up a set of stairs. Because of my fear, I hesitated doing it. I was trapped in a mindset of “not being good enough.” I was caught in the comparison trap and was controlled by what other people might think. Proverbs 29:25 tells us that “the fear of man is a snare.”  It traps you and stops you from being who God created you to be. We have to quit worrying about what others think, because God accepts us just the way we are and we need to accept ourselves. Each one of us is created with our own unique design and expression. We were recently in Galveston, Texas and I saw some stairs going down to the ocean.  In that moment, I wanted to dance up …

Credit: Jessica Meckmann/Flickr/Creative Commons

Pushing through our fears to victory

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Choosing to push through our fear often means not knowing what lies on the other side of it. We waver wondering if we are doing the ‘right’ thing or if we’re going to end up making another mistake. It is always the ‘right’ decision to push through your fear.  Many times we won’t know what the outcome will be, but we do know that God is with us in the good and bad decisions of our lives. The Lord will work it out because we did the ‘right’ thing trusting Him in our decision to move beyond our uncertainty. The great men and women of faith had a deep understanding that God was always with them: “King David said this about him: ‘I see that the Lord is always with me. I will not be shaken, for he is right beside me.” (Acts 2:25) It is the same belief that all of us need. When we push through our fear God honors our choice and walks with us. The whole weight of God’s presence, power …