Doubt and Fear Don’t Make Great Friends
By: Michael Horner
Tags: Courage, Inspiration, Faith, Fear, Self

I’ve got these two friends I hang out with a lot.

My two friends have been hanging out with me pretty much most of my life. They seem to be a constant in life no matter what I’m doing, where I’m going, or who is around me. When I was dating my wife, they would show up at the most inopportune times and just kind of wiggle their way into every conversation.

After we got married, they showed up more and more, and it seemed my new wife had the same two friends. They often interfered in what we were trying to do.

Start a multi-level marketing business, and there they are. Get out of the multi-level marketing business because now you’re dead broke and begin ministry school. Yep, they show up again. Finish ministry school while holding down full-time jobs and start a part-time ministry, and they show up.

It’s not like they left. These two friends are always just hanging around.

Trying to Shake Friends That Aren’t Helping

They’re just words we carry with us way too much. Photo by Yasin Yusuf on Unsplash

I thought I had shaken my two friends by going into full-time mission work doing something I had experience doing. There were times when I didn’t even sense them around because I was in my element, teaching new believers how to start small businesses.

As long as I kept on doing my gifted work, my two friends didn’t show up to cause trouble.

As soon as I began working in an area, I didn’t have the gift to do; my two friends showed up fiercely.

My two friends showed up as I took on more responsibility than I should have. Quickly I went from being at peace doing something I loved to a world of conflict. Taking on duties for which I had no gift led to an abrupt departure from this foreign land and a rough landing back in the United States.

Ending up back in the United States with nothing but the clothes on my back, I tried keeping my two friends away with liberal doses of glasses of wine and food. It seemed like the more I tried to do, the harder I tried to be a success at life, the more these two jokers seemed to show up and noodle their way into whatever I was doing.

No matter how successful I was at sales, these two would show up. Sooner or later, all the hard work I was doing seemed to go kaput in a skinny instant, and I was trying to figure out what to do next. These two friends would be the ruin of me, and I knew that I had to figure out what to do with them fast. Overweight, out of shape, in debt up to my ear lobes, I desperately wanted to ditch these two friends.

A lifetime of them hanging around wasn’t leaving me with visions of a great future or even a mediocre one. A lifetime of these two was leaving me with images of ruin and despair.

Then One Day I Went Running

Running towards some new friends. Photo by Brian Erickson on Unsplash

And then one day I went running. I thought about taking up biking, but due to the expense of buying a bike and all the gear, running seemed like a less expensive route.

I found out something when I began to run. These two friends loved to show up as I was getting ready to go out to run.

They had all the reasons why it wasn’t a good idea to go running today. “It’s too dark out,” they would both declare with different arguments.

One of my friends would say, “You’re a klutz. You’ll probably fall over something and break your head wide open in the dark. Hours later, somebody might find you.”

My other friend would say, “You know, you don’t live in the best neighborhood, and only bad people are out in the early morning dark like this. You’re going to get robbed, and they’re going to steal everything you have.”

Now the one friend was mostly right, I can trip over a crack in the sidewalk, but his argument got more and more invalid every time I did step out the front door and go for a run. After all, when I began running, I lived in a large city, and it didn’t matter how early I went for a run. There were always cars around.

My other friend was also mostly right, there are bad people in big cities, and maybe they would want to mug me and steal everything I had on. Everything consisted of shorts, a t-shirt, socks, and my bouncy Kangoo boots, so it wasn’t like I had many valuables. Maybe they wanted to steal the key to the house I kept tied around one of the buckles of my boot.

Something extraordinary happened as every day I left my house early to go for a run. My two friends were still there. I could sense them hanging out around the corner. The difference was I couldn’t hear their voices as loudly, and it wasn’t because I am hard of hearing. Most times, I could hear their voices just fine, but their voices seemed to fade into the background as I ran.

Sure, they were there as I first began to toe the start line of a race, but it was like in the first mile, these two jokers drifted off, and the further I ran the more challenging it got to hear their voices.

When I toed the line for my first 100-mile race, I knew they were there. Still, it was harder to hear the voices because I knew I had done everything I could to finish this race. Now it was just a matter of time before I was strolling across the finish line.

By this time, you’re probably thinking I’m a total whack job.

I mean, who would hang out with two friends that don’t seem to be helping me succeed in life? Why would you carry two friends like this around your whole lifetime?

The truth is that if we are willing to admit it, we all carry these two friends around with us a lot. My two friends have pretty recognizable names, and I’m sure if you’re willing to admit it, you have two friends pretty much just like these two.

See, these two friends are named Doubt and Fear.

Doubt is always hanging around, telling me all the excuses why I can’t do something. “Oh, you don’t want to attempt to run 100 miles in one shot. You’ve got weak knees; you’ve never done anything like this.”

Doubt comes up with every reason why not to try something, and then when you’re in the midst of it comes up with every sane reason to stop doing it. Doubt is a pretty lousy friend because Doubt can’t encourage me to do great things, only give every reason why it’s not a good idea.

Fear, on the other hand, doesn’t so much speak as draw pictures. Every time I decide to attempt something extraordinary, Fear shows up and paints a picture of a result that I would enjoy doing.

Fear showed up as I lost weight, continually painting a picture of me getting hurt running and gaining all the weight back when I am rehabbing the injury. When I had to have ear surgery and couldn’t run for six weeks, Fear was a constant companion. Fear would paint pictures of my waistline expanding again and my ear never healing enough to go for a run.

Fear was there, showing me how my eardrum was going to burst and my brains were going to leak out the massive hole if I dared go running again after surgery. Fear is like that artist you see at museums where you want to go “yuck,” but you hang out trying to figure out the value of that particular piece of art hanging out in an art museum.

Friends That Lift Us

Embrace friends that will lift you to new heights. Photo by Sammie Vasquez on Unsplash

Fear paints pictures you can’t get out of your head and paints pictures like plane crashes, and you splattered all over the side of the mountain.

Neither one of these friends is going to help us draw closer to who we could become. So why carry them at all?

I think we carry them mostly because they’re comfortable. Fear and Doubt are like that easy chair we can sink into and let the cares and worries of this life fade away.

Doubt and Fear are two companions that don’t seem to get us closer to becoming extraordinary. They are so comfortable because they allow us to justify why we don’t attempt great things. Until we do.

The moment we step out and decide that no matter what these two jokers are saying or painting in our mind, we are going to go out and attempt great things becomes the moment it gets harder to hear their voices and see the pictures they’re painting in our minds.

Doubt and Fear cannot exist in the same atmosphere as Faith and Courage.

As I run further and further and attempt great things in my everyday life, my two lifelong friends, Doubt and Fear seem to be shrinking in their influence over me.