Here’s How to Move Past the Fear to Be Who You Really Are
Fear of success is far more dangerous than fear of failure because the subconscious mind works to prevent that which it fears. People may fear success because of low self-esteem and the feeling of not deserving it; because it will increase what others expect of them. Fear of success shows up as anxiety, indecision, avoidance, procrastination or acceptance of mediocrity.
— Joe Tye
For the past 15 years, I’ve trained and worked as a psychologist in all kinds of settings. Over time, you begin to hear that everyone goes through many of the same struggles regardless of their actual “diagnosis.” Anxiety, depression, emotional instability, cognitive difficulties, etc… all lead to a lot of difficulties leading the life we dreamed about as a child. So many of us had really beautiful dreams that we had to sacrifice in order to just make it through our childhood.
I was on a date last week when my date told me that he had to turn down a partial scholarship to play baseball in college because his family would not support his decision to leave his country and come to the United States. Their thinking was that he should do something more “practical” so that he could pay the bills. Parents completely unintentionally destroy the dreams of their children out of fear that their child will fail. It is completely understandable.
But when we don’t let our children go play baseball or follow their passion for music, we take them off their life path and inhibit the very experiences they will need in order to face the fear of success. When we interfere with people’s intuition and dreams, we teach them to question themselves. When we question who we are, we are incubating shame and condition ourselves to fit in rather than to rise above. Millions of people all over the world have had their dreams crushed for various reasons and live in this shame convinced that they can’t be successful. We abandon dreams because we’ve been told they do not logically make sense.
Creativity is not logical. Bringing a new vision into the world will never be logical. Yet, we train young adults in our culture to choose a professional career path and to get married. These are the struggles almost every one of my former clients had to wrestle with in order to feel better. Undoing the conditioning and getting to the place of “I’m going to just be who I really am and not care what people think” is way more difficult than most of realize. Moving past the shame and dealing with the underlying fear of not only your own thoughts but the thoughts of those people who care about you is a definite challenge!
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our Light, not our Darkness, that most frighten us. — Marianne Williamson
How To Start Moving Past the Fear
Most of us do not realize we are dealing with fear. We don’t always recognize this emotion underlying our behaviors. We have just been trained to keep working through the emotions but few of us really stop long enough to actually recognize the emotions in our mind and our bodies. The first step is to slow down long enough to actually see if you can feel your emotions — most people cannot do so.
The Power of Meditation and Seclusion
I am a big fan of meditation to begin to train people to slow down but taking time out to go into nature and to be by oneself can also help. In order to hear your own voice, you may need to commit to being secluded from other people’s opinions. Or you can try spending time with the type of people you imagine you would like to become and see how that makes you feel. Most of my clients are often surprised by how quickly they begin to realize how toxic their current life is when they change their environment briefly.
Accessing your Creativity
Once you have cultivated some space to be with yourself, it is helpful to have a creative outlet. You may have had one as a child that you haven’t touched in years. Writing, painting, dancing, singing, building or anything that you used to enjoy doing will likely help you process the emotions that come up. Our greatest insights in life often come from not forcing the work but in taking a break to see what comes up. Getting back in touch with what you used to do as a child sometimes even brings back the feeling of joy — the complete antidote to fear.
Prioritizing Joy
If you want to move past the fear of success, you have to work less and find more joy. So many of us just know that we are meant to be more than who we are but feel stuck. We have been stagnating in our careers and our personal lives. We are frustrated and angry. We begin to think we are crazy and that we are too full of ourselves. That is all just fear to speak. Taking a break to go out and find joy is necessary for releasing the grip fear has in our life. Your calendar should have 1 activity every day that makes you happy.
How to Face the Fear of Success
Whatever it is that you really want to do will now have to just be done. If you took the time to really reconnect with what you really desire, the time will come when you have to move forward with your dream. It is in these moments so many of us can sabotage our futures. Anxiety is a huge dream killer.
So how do you deal with it? Prepare for it. Build your support team ahead of time. Learn how to build some self-compassion and resilience prior to trying your new venture. Always remember that when the fear kicks in, the antidote is to take a break and find your joy. Eventually, you will retrain your mind and body to be okay with facing fear. You may even look forward to it in the future but be patient with the process. For most of us, it took decades to realize we are ashamed to be who we really are — overcoming the fear of success to find emotional freedom will take time.
Everything you want is on the other side of fear. — Jack Canfield
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Previously published on Medium.com.
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Photo credit: By Katherine Chase on Unsplash