One of the greatest challenges to success is facing ones fears. You’ll notice it’s a reoccurring theme in my blog and seen here in my previous interview with Life Coach Jaqui Duvall. The real question then, is why are we so scared of success?
On LiveStrong.com and in a post titled, “Handling Fear of Success,” licensed psychologist James J Messina talks to Jake Lawson about what those fears are and why they prevent us from success. Some of the reasons such as the fear of not being good enough, fear of not being happy once we achieve our goals and fear of being recognized when we do well, sound all too familiar to me. When someone compliments my writing, for example, I’m always scrounging around for words of critique versus praise.
But why? Why do we do this to ourselves? Isn’t the goal in life to be happy, to succeed, to accomplish all of our dreams? When we play video games or board games, how often are we worried about these same fears? We seldom think that we don’t deserve to win. But in the game of life, why is that we take ourselves out of the race, even before the competition has really begun?
It may be those self-sabotaging beliefs that motivated our actions as children such as, “nobody likes a winner” or “it’s best not to stand out from the crowd.” It could also be a deep, underlying belief that we are somehow unworthy of success because who are we really?!
The solution? Although there’s no easy solution, there are hope and love. Hope allows you to believe that dreams are possible and love involves loving yourself enough to believe that you can. Not everyone can make it to the top, but I truly believe that everyone deserves the chance to get there.
