What fears keep you hustling nonstop? Discover what’s behind your need to stay busy.

I remember the first time we were approached about joining a travel soccer team with our son. 

He was six.

“He’s so good,” they said.

As if it was imperative for him to hone his first-grade soccer skills now. That we had the potential makings of a star if only we chose the right path.

The choice would take our easy 6-week season and turn it into an 8-month one, with games two to four times every week in the spring. Our fun, exploratory approach to sports would become something competitive and serious. And Dad would no longer be his coach. 

The ‘no’ to that opportunity seemed crystal clear.

But that wasn’t the end of it. 

As he continued with his recreational soccer seasons, more parents asked about our choice to decline the travel league. More friends from the team moved to travel teams. And the more and more we heard about the necessity of travel soccer if we had any hope at all of making the high school team. It felt like we needed the right pedigree in order for him to continue on.

Whatever we think of when we think about commitments is, at the very least, incomplete.

We tend to see the visible parts: the practices, the carpools, the expenses. And we buy in to what we think we’re supposed to do as loving, ambitious parents.

But we rarely see what’s invisible underneath those choices: the assumptions and fears that drive them.

• What if the program is a feeder for the high school team and we’re not participating? 

• What if saying no means his skills no longer stack up to his peers?

• What if he doesn’t make the school team?

• What if he’s excluded from that social circle?

Suddenly, the clear ‘no’ to the opportunity isn’t quite as clear.

That’s what fear does. It clouds our choices and makes them feel like they’re not choices at all. It pushes us to overcommit in the name of opportunity. It makes us say yes when everything in our gut is begging us to say no.

We said ‘no’ to travel soccer at six. And then we said ‘no’ again at eleven.

We’re not afraid of missing the one right path.
We don’t believe that this one ‘no’ will close all future doors.
And we know that whether he makes the high school team or not, he’ll turn out just fine!

If you’re ready to go deeper, the Reading & Reflection Guide will help you name the fears that keep you hustling and walk it all the way through to the end to see that, sometimes, the ending isn’t what you feared at all.