How To Stop the fear of Change From Stopping Your Dreams Part I

There is a story about the former American President, Abraham Lincoln. A man who refused to accept his failures as being final, but rather used them to progress personally and professionally .

In 1831, he failed in business. In 1832, he was defeated in the state Legislature. In 1833 he failed in business again. In 1834, he was elected to the state legislature. But his sweet heart died. In 1836, he had a nervous breakdown. In 1838, he was defeated for the speaker of the state legislature.  In 1840, he was defeated for the electoral congress. In 1843, he was defeated for the congress. In 1846, he was defeated for congress. In 1848, he was defeated for congress. In 1855, he was defeated for senate. In 1856, he was defeated for vice president. In 1858, he was defeated for senate. In 1860, he was elected President of the United States of America. His story may sound like a catalogue of woes, but he fulfilled his destiny. His dreams came to pass because he refused to stay down.

You may have given up over and over again. You may have given up on yourself and lost hope about the future. You may be sitting on the rubbles of broken dreams-dreams that you once cherished. I want you to know that there is hope for you, if you don’t give up. Don’t give up on your dream of starting that business. Very soon the tide will turn in your favour. 

To fail means to be unsuccessful at something. In other words, not to achieve a set goal. However, I should say that you are not made a failure. We have some experience in life, which intend to convince us that we are not capable of achieving our  dreams. They seek to convince us that we are failures.

But failure never need be final. The experiences we regard as failures should be considered simply as temporary setbacks. To succeed, we must learn to handle failure. I have discovered that successful people are just failures who, despite their set backs, push on to achieve their goals. On the other hand, failures are the successful people who gave up because of temporary setbacks. Conrad Hilton, the hotel executive once said; "Successful people keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don’t quit".

What you consider as your greatest problem today may not be your problem. The greatest problem is how you see the problem. You may see the challenge as a dead-end or an opportunity for a turn around. You may see it as an obstacle or a potential blessing in disguise. I want to encourage you, don’t give up. Inside every adversity is an opportunity. God is setting you up for promotion. The greatest tests of your life will eventually produce the greatest testimonies.   

Why do people fail? There are many reasons.

One major cause of failure is fear.

Fear destroys will power. It paralyses. Fear breaks momentum and weakens enthusiasm. Fear introduces doubts and indecision. Fear holds in bondage. Fear breeds insecurity, discourages initiative and makes persistence impossible. We must break free from fear.

There is real fear, and there is shadow fear. Real fear, for example, is what you experience when you come face to face with a lion. Real fear is a defense mechanism programmed into your system to help you respond adequately to danger. But shadow fear is based on something that may not happen, a situation that is not yet real. Most of the things people fear is not real. Someone said fear is False Evidence Appearing Real. The fear of failure for example holds a lot of people in bondage. Once we have experienced a setback, the devil plays on our imagination. He uses a single experience to project pictures of failure into the future.

The student who fails an examination writes the next one without confidence. The person who fails in business ventures three times concludes that he may never make it after all. He projects the past on the future. Some whose dreams have been shattered in marriage find it difficult to believe that they will not be disappointed again. They are just convinced that something is bound to go wrong somewhere. Some really even believe that they are jinxed.

Don’t be afraid. The size of any problem is not as important as the size of the person perspective. Greater abilities are on your inside than the challenge on your outside. There is a difference between failure as a person and failure as an event. It is the event that messed up. As a person, you are still a success.So try it again!


Enjoy your moments !