What If You Can?

By Barry Frye

Have you ever decided you were going to do something, felt good about the decision, and then almost immediately started hearing all the reasons why you shouldn’t?

Sometimes those reasons come from other people.

A friend may ask if you are sure. A coworker may remind you how much work it is going to take. A family member may point out everything that could go wrong.

Most of the time, they probably mean well. The people who care about us do not want to see us disappointed, overwhelmed, or hurt. And sometimes they see things we don’t. There is value in having people around us who are willing to ask difficult questions.

But something interesting can happen if we hear those questions often enough.

Eventually, they stop sounding like someone else’s voice.

They start sounding like ours.

The Voice We Carry With Us

Discouragement rarely arrives as someone standing in front of us saying, “You can’t do that.”

Usually, it sounds much more reasonable.

Are you sure you have time for that?

That sounds like a lot.

Do you really want to take that risk?

What happens if it doesn’t work?

Those are not necessarily bad questions.

There is a difference, though, between someone helping us think through a decision and someone convincing us that we are incapable of making it.

The real danger may come later, when nobody else has to discourage us anymore because we have learned to do it ourselves.

I know that voice.

At 61, I work full-time, attend school full-time, and somehow agreed to help a friend build a business along the way. There are days when I look at everything on my plate and wonder exactly what I was thinking.

And yes, sometimes that familiar little voice shows up.

What if you can’t do all of this?

I could spend a lot of time trying to prove that voice wrong.

Or maybe I can ask it a different question.

What if I can?

A Lesson I Thought I Was Teaching Someone Else

Thinking about all of this reminded me of something from a long time ago.

When my kids were little, I used to read them The Little Engine That Could.

Most of us know the story. A little engine faces a hill that seems too difficult to climb. Instead of deciding she cannot do it, she keeps telling herself:

I think I can.

At the time, I was just a dad reading a story to my children.

I wanted them to understand the lesson. Keep trying. Believe in yourself. Don’t decide something is impossible before you have even given yourself the chance.

Funny how something you teach your children can come back decades later and teach you.

The hill in that story did not suddenly become smaller.

The climb did not become easier.

What changed was the voice the little engine chose to listen to.

Maybe adulthood isn’t so different.

The hill can still be steep. The work can still be hard. The uncertainty can still be real.

But we get some say in which voice gets the final word.

Fear Is Information, Not Instruction

Sometimes we assume that if we are afraid, uncertain, or uncomfortable, we must be making the wrong decision.

I’m not sure that’s true.

Sometimes fear simply means we are doing something we have never done before.

Think about the first time you accepted a leadership position. Changed careers. Had a difficult conversation. Walked into a classroom after years away. Started over somewhere new. Tried something without knowing how it would turn out.

Were you completely confident?

I doubt it.

Most of us would like confidence to arrive first. We want reassurance that everything is going to work before we take the step.

Life rarely gives us that guarantee.

Sometimes confidence comes afterward.

It comes because we took the step while we were still uncertain and discovered that we could handle what came next.

And then we took another.

But What If I Fail?

That question deserves an answer too.

What if I fail?

You might.

Not every idea works. Not every decision turns out the way we hoped. Sometimes we take the chance, do our best, and still end up disappointed.

But I’m not sure failure is always the opposite of success.

Some of the strongest people and organizations I know are willing to try something without a guarantee that it will work. When it doesn’t, they ask what happened, what they learned, and what they will do differently the next time.

Failure becomes information.

Maybe we discover an approach that doesn’t work. Maybe we learn something about ourselves that we didn’t know before. Maybe the experience sends us in a direction we never would have considered if everything had gone according to plan.

The danger isn’t necessarily failing.

The danger comes when failure becomes the voice we carry forward.

You tried that once.

Remember what happened last time.

Maybe you just can’t do it.

A lesson from failure can help us make a better decision the next time. A fear of failure can make the decision for us before the next opportunity ever arrives.

There is a difference.

Fear also has an interesting way of presenting failure as the only risk.

It rarely asks about the cost of never trying.

What opportunity might we miss because we were afraid?

What conversation might we avoid?

What experience might we never have?

What might we spend years wondering about because we decided the answer was no before giving life the chance to answer differently?

Standing still is a decision too.

And sometimes it has a cost of its own.

Maybe the Voice Never Goes Away

I used to think confidence meant reaching a point where doubt disappeared.

I’m beginning to think that may be the wrong goal.

Maybe people who do difficult things still get nervous.

Maybe people who take chances still wonder whether they are making a mistake.

Maybe experience doesn’t teach us how to eliminate fear.

Maybe it teaches us that we can be afraid and move anyway.

That means the goal isn’t necessarily to silence every voice in our heads.

Some of them deserve our attention.

Experience deserves our attention.

Facts deserve our attention.

Constructive advice deserves our attention.

The people who genuinely know us and are willing to tell us the truth deserve our attention.

Fear deserves to be acknowledged too.

It just doesn’t automatically get to make the decision.

Which Voice Gets the Last Word?

Starting something takes courage.

Continuing may take even more.

The excitement that comes with a new beginning eventually wears off. Something gets difficult. Something doesn’t work. We make a mistake. We get tired.

And that voice comes back.

See? Maybe you can’t.

Maybe that is when we need to remember the little engine.

Not because repeating I think I can magically makes the hill disappear.

It doesn’t.

But because sometimes we need to hear a voice that reminds us the hill is not the same thing as the outcome.

So when the doubts arrive—and I suspect they always will—I’m going to try to remember the lesson I once thought I was teaching my children.

Listen to the advice.

Ask the hard questions.

Understand the risks.

Acknowledge the fear.

And then, before deciding something is beyond you, ask one more question.

What if you can?