Chapter 28
Conquer Your Fear of Success and Start Living Your Potential
Every parent has certain expectation from their children and to motivate them they use encouraging words such as, “You can do it”, “You have got all potential to achieve your goal,” or “Never give up and put all your efforts to achieve your goal.” Constructive criticism by your parents, teachers or coach such as “if you only work hard” or “if you put extra hours”, etc., are meant for motivating you; however, such words of motivation often instills fear in your mind—fear of letting down your parents and teachers or failure of achieving success.
While some people think that such feelings will motivate them to work hard in life to achieve their goals, others have a negative opinion as they believe that those feelings generate a contrary effect as they instill feelings of failure and self-doubt. Such feelings evolve and morph themselves thus causing the person to dread success. However, it is not essentially success itself that they are scared of; in fact, it is the fear of disappointing others or failure to meet the expectations to the intensity they had expected to reach. Instead of motivating people to work harder, the expectation along with motivational feedback in fact, hold them back from moving ahead in life.
Tips to Explore Fear of Success
An amalgamation of multiple fears results in the fear of success. For example, generally the fear of success may result from the fear of letting someone down who have immense faith in your capabilities— such as your parents, teachers, friends, and so on. Nevertheless, fear of success cannot fit in one sweeping statement, as success indicates different things to different people.
For instance, terror of success may interfere with your personal life by making you dread successful relationships. Now the question is why would anyone fear a successful relationship? In such cases, the fear of success may evolve as the consequence of a certain sub-fear of an impending failure. This fear may be ingrained in feelings such as shamefulness or of being pleased when someone known to them fails to achieve success.
From career perspective, it may be the outcome of one’s reluctance of competing with others or the reluctance of hurting others while moving ahead in life. It can also be the fear of being unable to a fear of being unable to achieve professional success or the fear that prevents one from taking the necessary risk to emerge out as successful.
Fear of success occurs due to innumerable ways and its sufferers should find measures to combat fear of success by identifying the fundamental causes and fears.
Overcoming a Fear of Success
Conquering the fear of success is often possible through self-exploration. You can also go for professional assistance by consulting a therapist who can counsel you in the right direction by helping you explore the real cause behind your fears and doubts. Therapists and counselors engage in verbal discussion that allows the person suffering from phobia to learn a lot about themselves. Fear prevents people from exploring their potential and living their life to the fullest. Negative feelings are deep rooted in our thought process and professional assistance goes a long way in uprooting those thoughts besides helping you build your self- confidence.
Different individuals experience different fears; hence one’s journey towards conquering one’s fears will be totally different from that of another. The ideal way to conquer your fears is to work with a qualified counselor who has adequate experience in identifying individual needs besides helping you follow specific approaches for overcoming your fears so that you can move ahead in life.