Do you have a fear of success?
This seems like a crazy concept, especially to beginning entrepreneurs.
Fear of failure? Of course. That makes sense. No one wants to fail. Fear of making the wrong decision? We all struggle with that: we want to do our absolute best!
But fear of success? That’s absurd…or is it?
We all dream of success, and what will happen when we finally do achieve that success. How the money will impact our financial situation, how our new connections and friendships will open doors.
But a fear of success sneaks in, often without entrepreneurs realizing it.
Melissa Gersin, a guest on the Success Unfiltered Podcast, is the creator of the Tranquilo Mat. When she came up with the idea, she was told NO: there was NO market for it, NO interest at all! She pushed past the NO’s and those who didn’t support her, only to find herself having to face one of her fears…. SUCCESS.
But how can you know that you’re struggling with the fear of success?
Here are a few identifying factors that can help you pinpoint those fears and conquer them.
How Your Fear of Success Can Manifest
You Self-Sabotage Your Own Success
Do you know what you need to do to achieve success, but find yourself struggling to do the work?
You’ve got all the parts to the puzzle, you just have to put them together.
What can self-sabotage look like? Here are a few behaviours to watch for:
- Not calling investors or clients back in a timely manner
- Spending time researching and scrolling the internet to see what others say instead of doing the work
- Buying courses and never taking them, or implementing what you’ve learned
- Delaying action
- Taking random time off from your business “just because”
- Spending your time on admin work (you should outsource) that doesn’t move your business forward
The worst part of self-sabotage is that entrepreneurs who do it rarely recognize their behaviors as self-sabotage, and then wonder why they are not successful.
These behaviours often sneak in, so once you’re aware, you can create boundaries around your work to protect your productivity and success.
Not feeling up to picking up the phone? Give yourself a pep talk! And, then get to work!
Struggling to get your work done? Practice time-blocking so you can sprint through the work.
Delaying taking action? Follow Mel Robbin’s 5-4-3-2-1 practice, and do a countdown and say YES to doing the work!
Feeling burnt out and tired? Plan your rest time, so you can get your tasks done!
Are you bogged down in admin tasks that are time consuming? Hire an assistant so you can do the big things that move your business forward!
Once you find out that you are self-sabotaging yourself – and how you are self-sabotaging your success – you can “hack” yourself, and find ways to work around these behaviours so you can work according to your strengths.
You Choose to Play Small
When you make business decisions, are you looking at the biggest and best scenario, or are you choosing to play safe and small?
Success can often mean scaling your business beyond what you feel like you can control.
It’s easy to do a few tasks: if you’re a service-based business, you only have enough time to serve so many clients before you are at maximum capacity.
If you’re selling a product, you know how much you can produce, market, and sell easily.
Melissa Gersin is the perfect example: when she took the Tranquilo Mat to Amazon, she had two choices to fulfil the orders. One was more established, and expensive. The other was a friend, and much cheaper.
In her gut, Melissa knew that she should go with the more established fulfilment center. But she said YES to the cheaper option.
In retrospect, she knows that she chose to play small. She allowed the fear of success to hold her back. Instead of having more product on demand, she feared not being able to make her investment back.
You Don’t Want to Change
Success will change your world, there’s no doubt about that.
Your entire world will change when people realize just how life-changing your product or service is. When people buy your products or services, and recognize the value that you brought to them.
What started as a small idea has the potential to explode.
It’s like a piece of popcorn: the kernel has something good inside it. In order to access it, the kernel has to irrevocably change. There’s no going back to being a hard kernel: but it’s become something better, and greater (and definitely more useful, especially if you’re at the movies!).
Sometimes, entrepreneurs stubbornly avoid change. They fear what those changes could do in their lives. They don’t want to be a sell-out. They don’t want to lose their friends. Maybe they don’t want to lose the life that they currently have.
Success often means embracing that change. Embracing that you will change; that your entire life will change.
And royal family, I just want to remind you that change is not a bad thing.
In Conclusion
We know how to deal with many of our fears. But fear of success is one of those fears that can be way more difficult to deal with, mostly because people don’t even recognize that they are struggling with this fear.
So I have to ask: are you struggling with business fears and it’s holding you back? If you are struggling with the fear of success, how does it manifest itself, and how are you working on overcoming it? Tell us about it in the comments!
