Some people fear failure, and others fear success. That might seem nuts to fear success, but success brings responsibility, and some people are afraid of that too. If you really want to be more successful it’s time to work through your fear.
Signs of Fear of Success
If you fear success, there is a chance that you actively avoid success. You don’t make goals, remember deadlines, or aren’t self-motivated, or often second-guess yourself. Making decisions is difficult for someone who is acting in fear.
In fact, fear of success is so intense in some people that it seems disaster strikes them anytime they’re getting ready to taste success. They get sick, use drugs, and actively sabotage themselves. Some people just never make decisions and don’t even realize they’re practicing sabotage.
To deal with fear, you can work through it by doing the following:
- Confront Limiting Beliefs – This could be about all sorts of things from yourself to what you think about society. You must remember that your life is just one of millions, and even though your feelings and experiences are valid, they’re not a real representation of reality.
- Surround Yourself with Supportive People – The more people you have around you that are positive and supportive of you, the better. People who want the best for you will not encourage you to stay stagnant in life. They’ll want to hold you up and help push you toward success with joy.
- Keep a Journal – A gratitude journal is helpful, but so is a journal that you write down all your negative self-talk. After you let it all out, go back and correct what you wrote as if your child wrote it to turn it into positive self-talk.
- Revel in Past and Current Successes – The one way to get over the fear of success is to experience more success. When you do something difficult for you to do, and you feel good about it, let yourself feel it. It’s fun to be successful, and you should be proud of everything you overcome.
- Ask Yourself: What’s the Worst That Can Happen? – For any given situation, when you are unsure of what to do, and you can feel the fear rising up and preventing you from making a good choice, ask yourself what the worst thing can happen is based on each option you can make before making a choice.
- Accept Discomfort – The idea that you can be successful in life without any discomfort at all is flat out wrong. The truth is when you feel uncomfortable is when you are most likely to learn something amazing or accomplish something amazing.
The more success you experience, the less fear you’re going to have. Challenge yourself and learn as much as you can so that you can overcome any fear that is holding you back.
