The Danger in Riding Fences

When I write, I spend a lot of time staring at a blank screen.

I also spend a lot of time suffocating the little key on my laptop known as "backspace."

The delete key wins honorable mention, but only because it's what backspace should have been named.

And in all of this staring and key-mashing, I find myself frustrated, wallowing in my own destructive self-talk.

No, that's not good enough.

BACKSPACE

Why would people be interested in that?

DELETE

You'll never "make it" with lame ideas like this.

UNDO

And the negative self-talk persists. No matter how many posts I write or how many people read my words, those doubts creep up on me each time I'm trying to decide on the words that will fill my screen.

I realized something the other day, though. Something that helps. It doesn't heal the negativity I have toward myself (and that's another series of posts for another week entirely), but it keeps me from getting ugly.

So what did I realize?

The easiest way for me to nip my defeating self-talk in the bud is to simply make a decision.

This is one of the hardest things for me to do in life. Ask anyone that knows me (especially my wife). I'm often chained down by indecision because I don't have enough confidence in myself to believe that I could actually be doing something correctly.

But what I realized the other day is this: oftentimes, when I'm deciding between one thing or another, the results of choosing one or the other won't be nearly as devastating as choosing neither.

Step away from the fence, people.

Case in point: I've been aching over buying a camera lens forever. I finally decided on one two days ago, and I still have doubts about my choice. But if I kept riding the fence and "playing it safe," I was going to be losing out on precious opportunities to use a new lens to capture memories - the whole point of my photography.

Not deciding was worse for me than choosing either of the options, and this is often the case with most decisions in life.

So today, learn from my mistakes. Make a choice, jump off that fence, and destroy it while you're down. The danger in riding fences is that they get you nowhere, and they get you there fast.

I don't know what decision you need to make to today, but I do know that making one is better than making none. Figure out what decisions you're avoiding in your life and do. something. about. them.

... ... ...

Questions: What sort of decisions have you been avoiding? Why have you avoided choosing a side? What is there to gain from riding the fence? 

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photo credit: raZna - sxc.hu