Do You Fear Success?

People fear success for various reasons. The truth is success can be scary. Some individuals think they aren’t good enough to be successful. Rather than believing in their own abilities, they think there are others who are better than they are. It helps to find someone who has already achieved goals similar to what you want to achieve. Tell yourself if someone else has done it so can you. By following someone else’s example, you will realize that it is possible to achieve your own success. Success means stepping out of your comfort zone and moving into unfamiliar territory. It means taking a risk as you face new challenges and put yourself under new pressures. But unless you believe in yourself, it’s going to be hard to convince other people to believe in you. You may also worry that the road to success will lead to disappointment or somehow change who you are. Maybe you think success will cause you to lose some part of yourself when in reality success can give you more choices and make you a better person. What’s more, you shouldn’t worry that others will be threatened by your success. This can cause you to question whether you deserve success. But how do you know if you have a fear of success? For one thing, you talk more than you "do". You allow yourself to get easily distracted and frequently second-guess the decisions you make.

However, the biggest clues are you don’t think what you do is ever good enough and everything starts going wrong the closer you get to success. For one thing, you can’t be afraid to stand out from the crowd if you are going to be successful. Nor can you be afraid of rejection. Not everyone is going to like you but that doesn’t mean they won’t accept you for who you are. A key to success is in seeing your goals through to the end. Naturally, things are bound to get tougher as you push forward and meet with more obstacles along the way. There may even be times when you are tempted to turn around and go back the way you came. That may be the safe and familiar path but it’s not the challenging path. Success means pushing past your fears, particularly the fear of the unknown. Get rid of these negative emotions and tell yourself you deserve to be successful. Tell yourself that you have the abilities to achieve your dreams and get the results you want. 

Some people are scared by success because it means continuously challenging yourself to remain successful. Success also brings with it change and some people equate changes in their lives with loss – primarily, the loss of the familiar. If the fear of change is causing you to fear success, remember that change is inevitable whether or not you are successful. The changes in your life are the result of the choices you make. Since you can’t escape change, you might as well reach for success and work for what it is that you really want.