“The disadvantage of becoming wise is that you realize how foolish you’ve been.” – Evan Esar

Whenever I’m facing a big decision, I always struggle to determine if what I’m thinking is fear or wisdom. I never want to listen to fear. People say that there are 365 references to “not fearing” in the Bible. I’ve never counted, but I know that no good comes from fear.

But what if that voice screaming “NO!!” is wisdom?

Fear is defined as an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain or a threat. Pay special attention to the word belief. I can “believe” all sorts of wonderful or terrible things.

Wisdom is defined as the quality of having experience, knowledge and good judgment. That’s a little vague and I’ve always heard that good judgment comes from making a lot of decisions and learning from the outcomes. That means we learn from making bad decisions as well as good ones.

How do I increase my odds of making good decisions? Of being wise rather than scared? Here is what I’m figuring out.

1. Know Your End Game: In business and life, we need a vision of where we want to go – what we want things to look like years down the road. When we have this vision, we can ask ourselves – “In light of where I want to go, is this a wise decision?”

2. Know Your Core Values: Your core values are your “rules of the road.” I like to think of them as guard rails on the road of life. Our core values are based on who we want to be and they help us make good decisions on the way. Like guard rails, they keep us out of the ditches of life.

3. Seek Wise Counsel: I prefer learning from other people's mistakes rather than my own. That is why I love learning from people who have lived through what I am going through. If that person is wise, they have learned from their mistakes and the mistakes of others. They are a deep well to draw from.

We can also gain wisdom from great books. The Bible is my source of truth so if it speaks to a decision I need to make, the decision is easy. The internet – though full of plenty of bad advice – can be a great source for good advice. Just know your sources and compare their ideas to your source of truth.

We must understand that if we want to be “normal” in today’s world we will get the outcomes that the world is getting. I see what those outcomes are, and I don’t want them. I’ve realized that I’m going to need to make decisions that may not seem “wise/logical/conservative” in the eyes of the world.

We (Jill and I) must get in the habit of slowing down, taking our time with decisions and asking ourselves – “Is this the wise the thing to do in light of where we want to go?”

Back to that fear thing.

Fear is the number one deterrent from us living the life we are called to live. Fear wants us to be safe, conservative and play it small. Fear wants us in our comfort zone.

Wisdom wants us to grow. It tells us we can do all things. Growth doesn’t happen in our comfort zones, so wisdom wants us out of those zones. Therefore, we should expect walking in wisdom to cause fear.

We cannot mistake that feeling of fear yelling – “You shouldn’t go there. It is not wise!” with wisdom. That feeling of fear is our natural reaction to pushing against our comfort zones.

Wisdom wants us to grow and growth is scary most of the time. Lastly, I’ve found that the wise decision is rarely made in a rush. Limited time offers and “one-time” opportunities generally show up again if they are a wise move.

I’ll close with this my favorite definition of wisdom. I got it from Charles Stanley – longtime pastor at First Baptist Church in Atlanta and father of Andy Stanley: “Godly wisdom means that we see things from God’s viewpoint and respond according to the principles of scripture.”

Writing this has helped with the decision I’ve been working through. I hope it will do the same for you.