Are You Afraid to Succeed

When you briefly think about achieving success you may not notice your fear of it. It’ll be easy for you to establish new goals and uncover more desires to be successful. It’s not until you attempt to take action that you’ll notice hindrance.

Your fear of success could be holding you back from accomplishing your greater goals. The immense sense of change can throw you off resulting in lack of progress. This doesn’t mean that you don’t want it just that that type of success is a bit frightening.

Typically it’s hard to identify this kind of fear because it’s not something that is overly obvious. You can be very familiar with your characteristics and still not know about this trait. In order to find it you have to do some real probing or pay close attention to your habits.

If your most desired goals seem more challenging than they should be consider self-sabotage.

Is the Fear of Success Sabotaging You?

Think of a goal that you’d like to achieve. Then take 20 to 30 minutes and answer the following question:
“What will happen if I succeed?”

Write down everything you can think of, both the good and bad consequences of achieving your goal.

It’s important to take at least 20 minutes to answer the question. Your initial answers are likely to be superficial. Simply keep writing for at least 20 minutes.
Put down everything that comes to mind. Nothing is too silly or too small. If, after 20 minutes, you’re still pouring out good stuff, then keep on going.

Suppose your goal is to increase your income by $10,000-15,000 a year. Your list might include some of these items:
• I’ll be able to reduce my debt.
• I can buy a new car.
• I can go on the vacation I’ve been wanting.
• I’ll have to pay a lot in taxes.
• My little brother will want to borrow money.
• I don’t know what to do with the money after I’ve got it.
• People will treat me differently.
• I should get a new house. But I don’t know where to move to?
• My partner will try to spend it all.
• I’ll probably just loose it or invest it incorrectly.

In your excitement, you might quickly jot down some of the things you’ve wanted to buy, and once you have the money, you can. But then, as you delve further into all your feelings about achieving your goal, some of the not-so-positive consequences of your achievement appear on your page.

Some of these consequences may reveal things you fear happening if you really achieved your goals.
Goals are never completely free of fear. Achievement always involves change, and all change involves some apprehension.

You might truly desire to be successful, but it the feelings of fear due to the changes outweigh the positive feelings in your mind, progress will be slow and challenging.

How to Eliminate Your Fear of Success

If you can make yourself aware of your apprehensions, you have the opportunity to attach each of them and eliminate them or at least minimize them so that you can make progress.

Looking directly at these fears is very powerful. Fears that are not acknowledged tend to grow stronger. Fears that are examined tend to be minimized, which will help you take aggressive action towards the completion of a goal.

Ultimately, if you look closely at your fears, you’ll see that the perceived side effects are what often seem scariest when pursing goals. So before you give up on your plans, ask yourself what would happen if you were ultimately successful. Tackle your fears head on and you can start achieving your dreams today.