What Causes Fear Of Success? 10 Reasons And How To Overcome It
It would seem that the most common blockade on achieving our goals is the fear of failure. However, we also often carry out self-sabotage as a result of fear of success. Discover 10 reasons why so many of us are afraid of making our dreams come true.
Fear of success? You possibly think it’s just an invention of a vigorous imagination.
But before your defense mechanisms proudly say “I’m not affected”, stay open for a few more moments. It is quite possible that you’ll discover in this text a few things that are an obstacle for you on your way to achieving your goals. In most cases we’re not aware of the fears that guide our actions.
I know from experience that fear of success is as common as fear of failure. The difference is that almost all people haven’t any idea that success is something to be afraid of at all. And it’s exactly this lack of consciousness that makes it so difficult to exceed.
When I use the word “success” in this article, I don’t mean only this generally understood professional and financial success, which is at all times related to wealth, large house and high social status. Success can be understood in many other ways, and for some it means making their dreams come true, for others living in harmony with one another, and for others it means completing a vital social project.
How do you know we’re afraid of success?
Fear of success is quite difficult to discover, because it is simple to confuse it with laziness, procrastination, lack of self-confidence, or vice versa – with accusations of an enormous amount of tasks or blind stubbornness.
Everything I mentioned above can be a problem in itself, but it can even be a symptom of a problem that lies deeper (for example, fear of success).
Perhaps the habit of postponing has become our habit, not because we are lazy, but because we are afraid of what will occur when we finally reach our goal and alter our lives. Perhaps we lack self-confidence not because we are afraid of what others will think of us, but because for some reason we prefer to stay in our safe nest rather than boldly reaching for what we care about the most.
Behaviour that may indicate fear of success:
- You have difficulty completing projects,
- You have difficulty choosing a job or career path – you still feel like you should be doing something else than you are doing,
- You work continuously, without giving yourself a moment to reflect on whether you’re going in the right direction,
- It is difficult for you to focus on the task – you are easily distracted,
- You are convinced that you’ll not succeed or that success is not for you,
- You don’t take on new challenges in advance, assuming that you’ll not be capable to deal with them,
- You see your work as not good enough.
- Of course, these are just examples – fear of success can cause many other behaviors, and these behaviors don’t have to be related to this fear at all.
What causes fear of success? Here are ten reasons:
1. Success will make me change
Perhaps you think that when you start earning extra money, you’ll stop being yourself. You will become someone totally different. You will lose sight of what’s important in life and you’ll fall into a series of shopping. You will lose sight of what’s important in life and you’ll fall into a series of shopping sprees. Or maybe you’ll just change your lifestyle and lose what you love so much endlessly.
Remember that money, social status or a more prestigious degree alone cannot change who you are. They can only highlight certain traits that are already part of your personality. For example, if after promotion you become arrogant to people in the hierarchy under you, don’t think that this new position has made you arrogant. You already had that trait in you, and the new context only made it “float” to the surface.
Success (like any new situation in life) may really be a chance to get to know oneself better and see some features that might be worth working on. Therefore, don’t be afraid that you’ll discover in yourself something about which you don’t want to know. Consider it a chance to become a better person.
2. I will lose relationships with people I care about
Perhaps you think that when you succeed, others will start to envy you and leave you. That they will feel worse in your community and stop liking you. Or maybe you think that you won’t want to deal with them anymore, because they won’t be on “your level” anymore.
First of all, pay attention to the undeniable fact that if you limit yourself and erase your dreams just to make others like you, eventually you’ll stop liking them.
How is that possible? When we stand in the way of our own needs, our frustration starts to grow. It is usually directed to the outside world – to people who are the reason why we give up ourselves in front of our eyes. Relationships never work when one person continuously sacrifices for the benefit of another.
Secondly, let’s not fool ourselves – it can occur that once you realize your dreams, your old friends won’t be so keen to make a relationship with you. However, it has nothing to do with you. The reason for this is their own thinking about themselves. The question is whether you want to be friends with people who feel bad about who you are.
You can at all times wear a mask of somebody worse than you are to slot in with your community, but how long will it take? Sometimes you must let some people out of your life and open up to new relationships with people who will adore you for who you really are.
It is also possible that your loved ones will surprise you and enjoy your happiness. It’s a sign that it’s really worth keeping them near your heart.
3. People will start complaining about me.
You may be afraid that when you start telling your truth, or when you do things that somehow violate restrictive social patterns, you’re gonna stop being liked. Maybe soon there will be hate people who will start talking about nasty things. You may find yourself in the spotlight of the scoffers who will bring you down.
Understand that it’s the critics who have the problem, not the criticized. It is the one who pours his bile on others that carries it.
For some, the only way to feel good is to bring others to their level. When you understand that such an empty criticism doesn’t concern you at all, but only the critic, you can distance yourself from the critic and stop reacting emotionally to him/her.
To make it easier for yourself, imagine that there’s a thick, transparent glass between you and the haters. A glass that doesn’t let their names and empty words through. See how everything they say bounces off the glass and comes back to them. Meanwhile, you remain intact, on the other side of the glass.
4. Success will make it necessary for me to work hard
Maybe you’re afraid you won’t have that much time to yourself anymore. That you’ll have to work from morning to night, forgetting to watch movies and devote yourself to your hobbies. That success means the end of your freedom and the start of exhausting, even slave labor.
Striving for achievement doesn’t necessarily mean hard work. From my standpoint, it shouldn’t even look like that. Put so much pressure on yourself and fill your calendar with tasks will in fact let you do more, but it will even have plenty of negative consequences, such as chronic stress or lack of good sleep – in the end, it will only distract you from achieving your goals.
I’m a big fan of the philosophy of small steps and that I believe that we can reach for everything we want in life, doing it in harmony with our needs for rest, relaxation and fun.
A suitable balance and a rested mind is a guarantee of great motivation, at all times fresh creativity and pleasure from work. This is the only wise way to ensure that everything we do is of the highest quality.
Of course, there will be times when you must “push”. That’s normal. But if we remember that these more intense periods of work cannot last too long, it is going to be easier for us to focus on our work and do everything we can to get up to speed.
5. The accomplishment of my dreams is the end of my journey
What happens when you realize your dreams? What happens next?
For many people, fear of success can be virtually as strong as fear of death. It is a fear that once they’ve achieved everything they’ve to attain, they will lose all their life energy, because there will be nothing more to attain. This for them is equal to the loss of sense of life. Such people decide to stay endlessly on the constant path to their goal, unaware of the undeniable fact that someplace in their hearts – they never want to reach it.
It is worth meditating on an easy and important truth – the appetite grows with eating. This is how life works. Every new experience opens us up to new adventures. Each new success inspires us to attain new achievements. After all, even if we could live for 300 years, we wouldn’t have enough time to try all the tastes of life.
That’s why the most probably scenario is that once you realize your dreams, there will be even more thrilling ones in your head. With each achieved goal you’ll have more and more life energy, not the other way around.
6. Success will make me must take responsibility for my life
There’s no point in fooling yourself – it’s true. To achieve your goals, you need to take the control in your own hands.
Why are some of us so afraid of it? Because it can mean admitting to ourselves that we are responsible for what our lives now look like. That where we are now is the result of our own decisions, not bad politicians or bad weather.
How do we deal with this? There is no point in torturing yourself for what you became and what your life is now. Until now, you have possibly been working on autopilot anyway. And the way the autopilot was programmed is thanks to your parents and the school you attended.
The most significant thing is what you do with it now. This is your responsibility for the moment – how you’ll manage your life.
7. I will at all times must succeed
Perhaps you think that when you realize your dreams, you’ll at all times must be infallible and ideal. By entering a certain level, others can expect you to stay there and not allow themselves to be weak.
It is worth understanding that such a way of thinking is related to low self-esteem. If you feel that as a successful person you will be unable to afford weakness, ignorance and making mistakes, the problem lies in your relationship with yourself and not in the expectations that other people may have of you.
Before you reach for giant things, work on how you consider yourself. You will need a healthy self-esteem, otherwise you’ll be putting pressure on yourself, which will undoubtedly be exhausting.
8. People will realize that I’m not worth anything.
There is something like “impostor syndrome” where some people think that their success is just a coincidence, a fluke, or the result of other external factors. A person with this syndrome is stuffed with fear that eventually, irrespective of visible and documented successes, it will come to light that it’s worth nothing.
In their understanding, achieving success is just another opportunity for people to discover the reality and find out that it was just a coincidence and that we didn’t deserve it at all.
How to deal with it? As in the previous point, it’s also a question of self-esteem and how we consider ourselves. If we are convinced that our skills aren’t enough or that we don’t deserve success, it is going to be difficult for us to attribute our achievements to ourselves.
We will do everything we can to make sure that our way of thinking is not violated – even if it is clear that the accomplishment is solely our merit. We will continue to rationalize it with external factors, cultivating our fear of being seen through and through.
9. Success will make me popular
A little more success can mean a camera, pictures in tabloids, interviews on TV or articles in news portals (and that I don’t just mean celebrities). It is not snug for everybody, particularly when it requires discovering a part of one’s private life. And it’s not necessarily about the heyta I wrote about in one of the previous points. Even without a wave of criticism, living in the spotlight is a big challenge.
Some people are also afraid that when they stand on the pedestal and it is going to be loud about them after some time, no matter how much they don’t want it – the media will find another favorite and all this light will go some other place.
The vision of losing such interest can be a painful prospect and can discourage many people from reaching for their dreams.
10. I can’t handle my success.
The higher you go, the more it hurts to fall.
Some people are afraid that they will lose the position for which they’ve worked for so long. That they will lose the money they’ve earned so hard. That they will must continuously fight to keep their win or win. Such people see being a successful man as an enormous effort and a constant life of fear for the loss of what they’ve managed to gain.
Success is simply an external effect of who you are and what you can do. Therefore, even if you temporarily lose some material possessions, social status or position in the company you work for, it doesn’t mean that you lose it, so you managed to reach for it all. Enriched with new experiences, you’ll be capable to work on new achievements. There is no need to live in fear of losing what you’ve earned when you know you’ll be capable to reach for it again.
That’s it! That’s it! I’m curious how much you have found in the above points of truth about yourself. Choose the points that gave you the most to consider – and provide yourself some time to reflect on them in the near future.
