Changing Your Perspective From Fear to Hope.

Imagine with me for a minute…

You are a little kid again.  It is bedtime so you hesitantly crawl into bed trying every excuse to stay up a little bit longer. You don’t want to actually go to bed in fear you might miss out on something fun. However, your bed looks cozy, warm, and inviting. So after many unsuccessful pleas to your mom and dad, you clamber into your bed and snuggle up under the covers.  Your parents kiss you goodnight and turn off the lights.

Then something changes.

Your once warm and familiar bedroom begins to transform before your eyes. The room seems to grow darker and shadows began to appear on your walls.  The everyday sounds of the night settling, seem to grow louder with intensity.  Your sense of awareness commences and your skin begins to crawl.  Then after you grow tense with stillness your imagination begins to drift.  The shadows begin to take shape into some grotesque creature and those sounds of the night begin to take a form to match the monstrous figure. Fear has begun to take over and you scream.

The lights turn on.

Your parents rush in and run to your side.  You describe the monster and the hideous sounds that came from it.  Dad checks under the bed.  Mom locates the source of the shadow.  It is a tree branch outside your window.  The sounds that you heard were nothing but the scratching of the branches against your window and your pet cat playing with a toy under the bed.

The fears you had have been dismantled and your parents beg you to go to sleep. After good nights once again, The lights go off. Now you see the shadow as a branch.  The sounds you heard just minutes earlier that crippled you in fear are now nothing more but familiar sounds that you hear every night.

Your perspective has changed and now you can rest and find sleep.

Perspective is crucial in life.  I am learning this now more than ever.

We finished our last wedding of 2016 in November.  33 weddings!  It was an amazing year.  So many awesome adventures and new things for us.  Not to mention, so many incredible couples that invited us to share their wedding day with.  We cannot say enough about how grateful we are for these opportunities.

After we finished shooting and delivered all the weddings, things around here started to slow down just a little. We had time to think.  2016 was our best year in so many aspects.  However, we began to look into all the details of our business and we uncovered so many things we were not happy with.  I began to look at everything from our website, our process, to even our work.  I saw so many flaws and I honestly began to feel overwhelmed.

And then fear crept in.  I asked myself,  was 2016 our best year?  I began to question my capability.  Am I able to do better?  Is our work going to get better or is this it?  Am I able to pursue these new ideas and new passions that are in my heart?  Fear told me no.

For about 2 weeks I almost gave up.  Of course not on our brides…. I would never do that.  But I almost gave up for striving for more.  Fear told me that it was too much.  Fear told me that I wasn’t smart enough, organized enough, or even driven enough.

I believed Fear.

Well, at least I wrestled with Fear for about 2 weeks.

Nevertheless, I decided to change my perspective.  I really don’t know how much we are capable of. I really don’t know where this business or other ideas and ventures we have in mind will go.  However, I do know that when God gives you vision then he has given you everything you need to fulfill that vision.

So, I began to remind myself of this daily.  I know that some people might think this a little cliche and simple minded.  Nonetheless, I needed this reminder.  Fear has a funny way of creeping in and making you doubt yourself.  So in order for me to crush this fear, I needed to focus on the perspective of what God has given me to make this vision come to pass.  I also began to focus on the positive results of what would happen if we pushed ourselves in 2017.  This is what I came up with:

1. Our 2017 couples would get an even greater experience with us.

2. Our new business venture would take off.  This resulting in creating a community for business owners who need others to come alongside them and help them embrace their identity and purpose.

3. Growth.  ( This is a BIG one! ). We would be stretched more than we can imagine which only leads to growth.

4. More resources.  ( Finding individuals who could be a resource to us in the form of outsourcing, babysitting, business consulting, or more)

These are just a few of the positives that I focus on when I decided to change my perspective away from fear and towards hope.

We want our business to be successful and not only that but we want to be a resource of hope and encouragement for our couples and other entrepreneurs that we come across.  Our goal is to be influential to living a life that is fulfilling and honest to your purpose. We cannot be influential if we are living in fear.  So it is time to change our perspective.

What is your perspective now and how can you change that into a more positive one?