Scared Of Success: The Fear In Love, Money, Career & Life
Coming to terms with feeling deserving of good things can be a little difficult for some.
Do you know how people fear failure, and it prevents them from doing things? They are so afraid to fail that they let life and good things pass them by. They are afraid to take a risk because they might fail and not get what they want.
Despite any accomplishments, that person can't shake off the feeling of being scared of success, and it holds them back from taking risks and pursuing new opportunities. When anything good happens, the person is just waiting for the other shoe to drop at any moment--that the person or thing they cherish and love might be taken from them. They may even have had instances in their lives when they were happy, on top of the world in love, doing well, or being in “the zone,” only to have something terrible happen to sabotage their happiness.
Has this ever happened to you?
When this happens, we start to let the parts of us that are trying to protect us from future pain take over and tell us things like, “Oh, it would never work out anyway,” That person is only a player and never loved you at all,” “You aren’t as smart or capable as you thought you were,” “You should settle for something safer and easier because true love (that dream job or house, etc.) will not last anyway.” That shaming voice of our inner critic actually once served a good purpose for us. As children, it helped keep us safe when we felt out of control in abusive, traumatizing families or from society at large. So, it served a wonderful function—when we were little. Now that we are all grown, we can change this.
This is a self-sabotaging response that our primitive brain (our subconscious mind) does in order to ensure that you stay alive and don’t die. This part of the brain is only concerned with life and death, so it does whatever it can to keep you locked in doing the same things over and over again, even if they are not healthy for you. (It’s not a very rational part of the brain; it operates on the instinct to survive. Rational thought is what the conscious mind is for. The conscious and subconscious minds are often not in synch, which is why coaching does wonders to help people align with their true desires.) So, this is why it will sabotage your best efforts at having anything “good” in your life, such as good health, financial abundance, true love, or a wonderfully fulfilling career.
Is there a way around being scared of success?
Don’t be discouraged if you’ve felt like this (or currently feel like this in life). This is the kind of coaching I do! I work with the deep limiting beliefs that keep you locked in self-sabotage. For example, no matter how hard you try to eat healthy and exercise, you still seem to give in to temptation. No matter how much you want to eliminate that smoking habit, you’re back to square one within a week. No matter how hard you try to stop attracting abusive narcissists, you can’t seem to shake them. You really mean to say “no” but something makes you always say “yes” instead. You feel resentful about your seeming lack of “willpower.”
It's really not about willpower. Sorry to shock you. It’s about moving out of self-sabotaging limiting beliefs, changing those old beliefs, and creating new habits that support your newly created beliefs about yourself rather than relying on the habits that allowed your old beliefs to stick for so long. There are proven strategies for helping you get past that primitive brain and onto a newer neural pathway in your brain. This is the exciting part for health and well-being and why I believe so much in coaching!
Sticking to owning ourselves and shining bright.
Back to the fear of success. It is a BIG one for our primitive, subconscious brains. On the surface and in our conscious minds, we truly do believe that having a gorgeous and healthy body, having more money than we know what to do with, having a job that excites and motivates us, and a love like no other would be amazing, right? I mean, who wouldn’t want those things? For example this one lady I had the pleasure of working with… She had a tendency to downplay her achievements and minimize her goals, which was a clear sign that she was scared of success and needed to work on her self-confidence. For the person who is afraid of success or love, there is deep fear about having all of that and then having it taken away from them. So, they settle for less because it is safer and they won’t be as crushed and devastated if they lose it. They won’t “die” according to their primitive brain. Having only one of these great things and then taking it away is hard enough, so imagine having it all and then losing it. Yikes!
How do you feel when you think about having all of these things or even only one of them? What I mean is, how does it feel in your body when you think about having the truest love possible or more money than you know what to do with?
All of these things are, in fact, possible. The only obstacle is your mind and how it creates the emotions in your body (i.e., stress/anxiety/fear) and the impact it has on your nervous system. For some, the fear of success actually makes their stomachs hurt and feel nauseated. Many times, this kind of vulnerability—being given compliments, laughing out loud like a child, thinking that you are more lovable than you could ever imagine—will cause us to go right into our minds and away from our bodies (our gut or heart where our intuition and knowing lives). We start to say things like, “Oh that? It was nothing. You are so much better at that than I am.”
Let’s stop downplaying ourselves.
We rationalize away our vulnerability and our true love within because when we have accepted compliments for looking beautiful or being smart, the world has told us things like:
Stop thinking you are so great
Stop showing off
You should be more humble
Or whatever societal messages we have gotten. This is because actually feeling the pain (anxiety) in our bodies (from those negative inner critic messages in our minds) makes us run from the “negative” or uncomfortable sensations in our bodies. It’s instinctual for us to run from pain and we likely had to escape our bodies when we were children and needed to be “safe” from trauma or even from the letdown of good things turned bad. We went right into our minds where it was “safer” and where we felt we had some control over our feelings. We shamed ourselves into “straightening up” and not being so “conceited” which took us back into scarcity and lack mode, playing it small, and feeling undeserving of good, even wonderful things. So, we then reject and abandon ourselves. We destroy our own self-worth by doing this. We destroy our chance for good things, too. We block out love with fear and then the good can’t reach us.
Receiving love from others is ok. Again, our logical minds will argue, “Of course I can receive love, Kristen! Duh!” But our bodies tell us the truth and if you notice that you are feeling any discomfort at the idea of having it all, that is your signal that perhaps your subconscious mind is actually running your show. Also, your life experience—of lack of love, abundance, happiness, or health—will also be your direct knowing about whether or not you have a fear of success.
Learning how to be okay with being successful is actually a wonderful thing for us to do and is good for the world at large. When we accept compliments from others, we don’t become conceited and arrogant. It’s when we think LESS of ourselves that we overcompensate with arrogance. The insecurity causes the conceitedness, not the self-love. When we love ourselves and truly embody the knowing that we deserve good things in life, we are filled with inner peace. We are not harming anyone at all. This is not selfish. True love is allowing and easy, not demanding and self-absorbed. The more you feel your truth (your worth and inner self-love), the more you will truly understand that love is freedom, and that all good things are possible.
I hope that this article has helped you in some way today.
