So you have this big dream of being successful. You think about it all the time, you talk about it the time, and you feel that you are ready. Then fear sets in and you think, “Oh crap, this is all pretty scary.”
Now, many of you have heard of people being “scared of failure”, but people being “scared of success”, no way! Yes way, some people are very scared of success and that’s okay. I know this because I was one of these people.
The thought of success feels great. Yet, the path to get there can suck sometimes. It’s rough and you have to continually fight many forces of nature, one of which is yourself. I see this so much with my clients and other people in my life. When fear hits the brain, people freeze and sometimes they sabotage their own path to success because they are scared of what they don’t know. I have been guilty of this too. So what’s so scary about success?
For some, being successful means sacrificing things like time, money, family, and more. There is this thing in Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) called “ecology.” Ecology just means, “how will your goal affect the people around you and your environment?” This is something to think about when you create goals. What are you willing to sacrifice or give up on your goals? What will you gain instead?
The fear of the unknown can be unsettling. I had a client once tell me, “What if I quit my job to follow my dreams and then I am still not happy and broke?” I said, “What if you quit your job to live your dreams and lived happily ever after?”If only I had a magic crystal ball to predict everybody’s future and then I could tell them exactly what they needed to do. Unfortunately, I don’t. So instead, I can only offer these pearls of wisdom:
We can go back and forth with ‘if, buts, and coconuts,’ still you won’t know what will happen until you actually do it and get out there.
In closing, I want to share some inspiring words from one of my favorite books from Deepak Chopra called “The Way of the Wizard: Twenty Spiritual Lessons for Creating the Life You Want.”
“What if you slept,
And what if,
in your sleep
you dreamed?
And what if,
in your dream,
you went to heaven
and there plucked
a strange and beautiful flower?
And what if,
when you awoke,
you had the flower
in your hand?
What then?”
Final thoughts: If the thought of success is really scary for you. Ask yourself, what is creating this fear? Can you modify your goal so that it can fit into your “ecology” better, this might help remove the fear. If it doesn’t remove the fear, keep working through your fears through journaling or meditation. If you want to gain more confidence, check out my blog post on “How to Unlearn an Unwanted Habit?”
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