Fear of success?

Fear of success comes in different forms, but it is usually a very close friend of the fear of the unknown.

The fact is, most of us have a great deal of sub-conscious contradictions when it comes to success. We've heard people say things like 'money is the root of evil' or 'It's lonely on the top', etc. Or just think about the connection many employees feel just by bashing 'the man'. This all contributes to create confusion about the motives to succeed.

Success also shines a spotlight to you, and that scares many people. "Who do you think you are?"... And what might be expected of you if you succeed big?

And also, if your identity is being poor, succeeding will force you to re-analyze your identity. This is a huge leap out of anyone's comfort zone. Being unsuccessful can be comfortable. Being a success can be uncomfortable.

These things feed the fear of the unknown called success.

Basically along the lines of what the previous two mentioned, fear of success can be correlated with fear of the unknown. 'What if I make too much money? What do I do when I get there? What if I peak out and then fall off a cliff?' There are so many unnecessary unknown factors people beat themselves up over when they've barely begun even on the right path to get there.

Just another funny way of looking at life or business in general I guess. Ever hear anyone say that they are their own worst enemy?

It's being your own worst enemy, and believing that either:

• You're not worthy of achieving what you want
• You're unable to deal with the consequences of being successful

You can be afraid of succeeding because succeeding means that you will attract attention to yourself. Introverted people are quite susceptible to this kind of fear. It is better to be comfortable and anonymous rather than be successful and recognized. You know what I'm saying?

I've seen fear of success manifest as a "too good to be true" scenario, with the successful person (sometimes myself!) self-sabotaging subconsciously, I guess because one thinks they don't deserve it and that something has gone wrong, because it is so "right"!

I think we hold ourselves back, for many reasons, but mostly due to conditioning (social/environmental/cultural) with regards to what our core beliefs are around the way things "should" be, fitting into a mould so to speak. Good question and has me pondering away :-)

Been there done that. Also helped other people get over it too.

If I can dig it out there's actually a product that I sold on this very subject. If I can find it (I might have even posted it here on the WF for free some time ago, so please feel free to search under my name and you might find it).

Anyway, that last part is a component of the fear of success for too many people i.e. the fear that people will check you out once you become successful.

...and guess what?

It's true.

When you start to become 'somebody' in relative comparison to who you are right now, people WILL want to learn more about you, about your background, who you WERE before you became this successful you.

That fear can be paralyzing for too many people to handle, so they stay where they are and when you do this, you basically bury your true potential.

There are a bunch of other things associated with this fear of success including being afraid of your ability to do the things that'll be necessary for you to avoid going back to being the 'ordinary' version of you.

Rather than write an overly long post please see if you can find the post or download I provided on this. I'll commit to doing the same to. I know that I called it something like "Are You The Invisible Pro?"

BAYO

Hey Glenn,

I figured it would help you out a bit to have this in a video response.


To summarize my answer a bit further: I don't think it's so much a fear of success, but rather a fear of responsibility that comes along with success, and then the feeling that many believe they have to continue to be as successful in order to be considered successful.

Hey Glenn,

Interesting question. One that affects many people without them even realizing it. Just thought I would throw in some info I recently learn in a book I am reading on the lies we tell ourselves. It seems we regularly tell ourselves lies we picked up along life. Everyone has heard of self-talk, well this goes deeper that self-talk it is beliefs we hold deep in our subconscious that we might not even realize. The author said these beliefs may not even surface until that particular belief is challenged, like when we start to become successful and have a mis-belief about success. I haven't finished the book, but have learned to find these beliefs by carefully listening to what is going on in my head. The book title is "Learning to Tell Myself the Truth". It is written by a Christian psychologist, but is a unique approach to your topic. I can imagine it can take awhile to make the necessary adjustment. I have wondered before just what could a person do if they would just get out of their own way.

Fear of success may have come from conspiracies as stated above "money is the root of all evil", "its lonely at the top" etc.

In general I think the fear of success may be the fear of surpassing your friends and family. There is an instinctual image of one becoming rich beyond their dreams, and people, their friends and family and the individual become separate and distant in some way.

Money can change people. We all have seen the possibility of that...

Or maybe It is a combination of that and the fear of the unknown. People naturally fear change. Fear comes when there is a perceived pain.

So what can you imagine being painful with success (also what defines success? - many will automatically think of money - so for this discussion we will assume success = money)...so large amounts of money? What have you seen and experienced in your lifetime that influences your subconscious.

Do you associate lots of money with loosing touch with reality, with not finding true happiness, with marriages that go to shit, with short-term happiness mixed with long term dissatisfaction in life, or do you associate money with freedom, leverage, love, ability to live ones life as they choose?

I think the fear of success would boil down to this...if you have more preconceived pain than pleasure to the possibility of success, conscious or subconscious, you will have fear of success.

I also believe, any fear that holds you back from what you consciously want is a fear that has not been addressed properly. You must question everything, especially thought patterns that may act as obstacles to what you really want.

That is a difficult question to answer. I think the fear is focused on the outward and what others perception of you might become.

There's been a ton of good responses in this thread already, so I wasn't going to answer. However, I think it's easy to be afraid of success, especially if it's financial in nature.

For me, anyway, I'm always afraid of losing myself. A proverb that crops up at some point in the Bible says, and I'm paraphrasing, "What good is it to gain the whole world and forfeit your soul in the process?" There's another one in there somewhere about how it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter Heaven. I haven't read it in a long time, so maybe I'm thinking of something else, and I know that this same notion exists in virtually all religions, not just Christianity. There is definitely truth there, and I don't want wealth to change me personally, just make my family's life more comfortable.

I also don't want people to just see money when they look at me. As of right now, I don't have a dime to my name. There's a humility in poverty that I don't want replaced by an ego, and when people first get to know me, they are forced to judge me based on the virtues and vices of my personality. Coming from a poor community, I'm afraid of being seen for what I am instead of for who I am.

You strive for success, in my opinion, when the benefits outweigh the potential pit falls. If I can provide a better life for my family, then that's worth it. Right now I'm living with my mother, who fears that she'll never be able to retire, in a house that is literally falling apart around us. The floor tiles are breaking up, the floor boards themselves threaten to tear a gap into the basement, and the winters are freezing due to the drafty walls, the insulation having crapped out on us years ago. Not to mention, our stove is on the verge of dying. For me, being able to change our living conditions and provide my mom with the retirement she deserves after working so hard to raise my brothers and I is what drives me forward.

I fear success, but I fear failing more.

EDIT: Oh, and these may be of interest: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/02/fa...died.html?_r=0
http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...ces-compassion

Its all in your mind and how you want to think about it.

It is a risk to take a risk; and it is also a risk not to take a risk The most important thing is to accept responsibility for your actions.

What they probably mean is they're afraid of "explosive growth" - and it's a rational fear.

For example, lets say you're a solo Entrepreneur offering a service. In the "normal" course of business, you would be doing a lot of the work yourself until you reach capacity and at that point you would be making enough money to hire and train someone else and continue to expand and move forward. So the fear is "What if I get (10/100/1000) people TOMORROW who want my service?"

An inexperienced Entrepreneur would say "It's a good problem to have", but it's actually a very rational fear - and one that shows the mark of a good leader who was conscious enough to think about it, confident enough in his marketing decisions, and smart enough to consider the impact to his brand if he didn't have the staff to meet an obligation he inadvertently oversold.

It's not a fear of success... it's a fear of premature success.

there are very negative feeling many people have about successful people ..

if people hold these beliefs they will not try to be successful ..it does not matter how dysfunctional their lives are now . they have a group of people to be dysfunctional with ..

but they hate rich people.. and they think rich people hate each other .. so they avoid become successful because they don't want the people who like them now to hate them .

that is why a lot of rich people are the black sheep or the out casts who never really fit in

it really comes down to defining what success means to you .. i have read there are two things most self made rich have in common ..

1 or two bankruptcies ..and a desire to make it and shove the fact they made it into the peoples faces who said they would never make it .

I can fully understand why so many people are afraid of being successful just like was mentioned in the earlier posts here. The fear of being successful has so much to do with people's own failures and how they might appear to others if they are successful.

Having that huge lime light shine on you can be quite scarry because it is at that point that you realize that people will expect more out of you and that is so true. However, never let that bother you because it will all work out in the end.

Don't waste your time. It does not exist. It's called "LAZINESS!" Gez wiz.

Hi glennshep,

I can really relate to some of the sound points "Diversion52" made in the 1st post of the thread.

The business of how we tend to relate to or judge the stereo-type of "the successful one" is pretty universal I suspect. I know I have seen my self judging "the man" whether it was a large corporation or a successful sole proprietor. Perceiving this as a societal norm tends to infect the subconscious in a negative, stay away way.

Also the hugest point for me made by Diversion52 was the concept of having a "pauper's identity or mentality". This is an enormous hurdle to surmount. Try to imagine what it would be like to attempt to change one's very Identity! Where you grew up, how you lived, what you ate everyday, how you played . . . and on and on. If those were wanting, poor times for you even if you were well cared for and loved, that source of Identity can strongly be all you want to be happy. Money? That's something rich people collect.

Thanks for the seriously thought provoking thread, glennshep.

I think that the fear of success in general, is when you feel a bit awkward about becoming successful. As one poster said on the first page.

It's similar to the fear of the unknown, but not quite.

You have this fear inside you that makes you think, if you make it, you're going to loose it all, or something will happen that will cause you to fail miserably after the said success happens.

So, in order to eliminate this, you have to embrace the unknown, and come to understand that you can take steps to secure your new found success, and that it's OK. To be successful, and there's nothing awkward about it.

The other thing you will want to say to yourself is that, this doesn't distance you or make you different from anyone else(as another poster said, was a contributing factor to the fear of success - which i agree upon too.)

You've got to make sure you know that your success will always be ok, if you keep yourself rooted to your old self, instead of letting your new found success take over your life.

For me it all comes down to our need to get the most pleasure and the least pain possible.

If you are constantly sabotaging your success, it means that somewhere in your mind you linked PAIN to SUCCESS.

Check out some Tony robbins stuff.. He's techniques really work great.

Cheers,

Gary

Success doesn't scare me. Change scares me.

I love sitting up late at night working on my websites, I love the rush of seeing a sale pop up on JVZOO, I love ducking and diving trying to make a buck here, there and every where.

Will I miss it it if I ever became "successful" Hell yeah, Id hate to have to outsource everything, Id hate to move from little office in my bedroom to a office complex, and Id to have enough money not keep me motivated to actually do something!

Until I started REALLY looking at why I was not getting the financial results I wanted, consciously I would never have thought I had fear of success. That just sounded crazy to me too!

But when I really started writing out all my beliefs around money, in the hope of getting better results, I was floored by how much fear I actually have about success.

It is based on the belief that money will bring undesirable side-effects and so I should not be *really* serious about it. Its hard to admit that I often dismissed opportunities based on these sort of primal fears, but I did. These are beliefs that kind of linger on the outside of your awareness until you identify and face them.

1. Fear of changes to daily routine, living and working situations and relationships with friends and family.
2. Fear of the perceptions people would have of me.
3. Fear of liability, personal safety and other financial risks.
4. Who do I think I am? I am not that kind of person.
5. Success will bring more stress and hassle than it is worth

So using the Iasos - Some of Bashar's core Concepts method I decided to replace these beliefs.

I now have a new belief which I recite and write often to drill into my whole mind:

"I MUST let in, allow and respond to all people, situations and events which will bring me the success I want, despite any and all fears that may occur to me."

Now that feels great! and is working awesome for me for the past couple of weeks already. Success is everywhere and opportunities abound, when you cast aside any beliefs that bring doubt or fear of it.

So I now take this as my duty, like a religious belief.

Success sometimes will bring someone to a disputable concept. For example, there was a doctor who took his examination and he got the highest notch. When he worked in his career as a doctor, he experienced failures. Okey, let's use this situation to explain "Fear of Success."

Fear and Success are cousins. Don't you know that? "Fear of success" is a result
of "Fear of Failures." People who are scared to have failures are those people who are not willing to take risks. If you will simply say "I don't want to have that" or "I don't want to become,"therefore you are "Fear of Success." Success has an equal responsibility and those are expectations, risks, service, integrity, love, and care. If the doctor experienced failures, then he surrendered because he believed that people will not trust him anymore, what do you think is the
doctor?:-)

People may fear success if they have had miserable lives.

For example, if a person was born in a poor family ; obviously when the person becomes rich he/she will feel different.

I have a friend who is afraid of success. Once he starts to get success in something, he quits it and starts something new.

Hey,

Fear of success is really exists. People just do not know what to do in case of they succeed and this keep them away from their dreams. Ask somebody what does he do in case of he becomes a millionaire. And in most cases people fantasy goes to quit their job and spend money.

Fear of success is fear of change. Some people rather stay loosers than to change their life radically.