This post is for all of us who have a fear of change or want to over come a fear.   

Our kitchen desperately needed to be rennovated.   All of the appliances were wearing out.   The fridge clunked every time the motor shut off.   The only way we could keep the oven door closed was to lock it.   The dishwasher leaked.   The linoleum floor had lifted and curled in several places.   The cupboards were so narrow you had to turn the pots sideways to get them in.

For the last year, my husband and I have been planning to build our dream kitchen.   This has been a wonderful experience for us.   We studied magazines and visited different kitchen displays.   We chose cupboard styles, cabinets, hardwood floors, new lights, all new appliances, furniture.   It has been so much fun! We arranged financing and set the day to start.  

But then things started to interfere.   First, our daughter decided to get married and we planned a garden wedding and reception.   We knew the kitchen wouldn’t be done in time, so we postponed it.   Then it was my husband’s 60th birthday, which meant a big party – so we had to postpone the kitchen rennovations again.

Then finally, we could start.   But suddenly, I was afraid.   I shocked myself.   I had been dreaming about this all year and now, I didn’t want to get started.   What was this all about? 

 All this time, I’d only thought of the end product – the beautiful dream kitchen I was going to have.   I’d never thought of what would be involved in getting my new kitchen.

The whole kitchen would be torn up completely – right down to the bare studs in the walls.    We would be living in chaos, with everything in boxes, stuffed in every available corner.    We would have the mess of gyproc dust and dirt being tracked through the rest of the house.

We were having family members do the work on their days off, so it would be a slow process.   I would be without a kitchen for probably a couple of months.  

Suddenly, my old fashioned, tacky kitchen felt really comfortable.   I realized what I was feeling was a fear of change – a fear of heading into the unknown.

How many of us put up with things that we don’t really want or put off going after things that we do really want because we have a fear of change?   How many of us choose to remain in our comfortable – or uncomfortable ruts, because they are familiar to us.

You’ve probably heard the old saying: “Better the devil you know then the devil you don’t.”   That’s just another way of saying the same thing.   Choosing to remain where you are because you are afraid of change.

In my next post, I will talk about how to address and eliminate this fear of change.