This Is Why You’re Actually Afraid of Being Successful

You’re the only one preventing your own success. Find out what to do about it.

By: E.B. Johnson

Whether you’re young or old, at the top of your game or just getting started in the working world — fear of success is a very real and very pervasive thing that can dramatically undermine your happiness. When we suffer from a fear of success, we self-sabotage and turn away from opportunities that might otherwise offer us rewarding experiences and fulfillment. If we truly want to find our way to that golden future, we have to learn to turn away from this fear and learn how to plant ourselves in the environments in which we can bloom.

To overcome this irrational fear of getting it right, we have to let go of our fear of being wrong and cultivate the understanding that allows us to unravel our most negative and toxic beliefs. Only by digging into the root of our insecurities and making peace with who we are and what we want, can we truly unlock the opportunities we need in order to achieve our goals and our dreams. We are the only ones responsible for our happiness and our success, but that’s a heavy cross to bear when you’re bogged down by the idea that you’re not good enough or not worthy enough. Let go of your fear of success if you truly want to thrive, and do it before you’re stuck forever.

A growing fear of success.

More often than not, we find our fear of success somewhere between our desire to flourish and the deep-seated insecurities that plague us from childhood onward. Hitting the big time or getting what you want can be a scary idea, but it’s an even scarier idea to think that you’re worthy of having everything you want in this life. If we want to build a future in which we achieve something meaningful, we have to let go of our fear of success.

The further we go in this life, the more we come into contact with the things the provide us hope and fulfillment. We raise these things up on a pedestal but, frequently, we find ourselves paralyzed and unable to pursue them in any meaningful way. We turn away from them, sabotage ourselves, and make ourselves miserable; all in the name of some unknown feeling of guilt or insecurity that tells us we can’t handle getting precisely what we need to be happy.

Fear of success is a toxic and pervasive state of being to exist in, and it’s one that can further feed in our isolation or feelings of loneliness or worthlessness. When we allow ourselves to remain stuck and detached from the people, environments or experiences that might otherwise help us thrive, we make the conscious decision to deny ourselves sustenance for our souls. Being happy means having the confidence to stride confidently after the things we want in this life. That means letting go of the idea that we aren’t good enough, or that success will somehow change us and taking responsibility for all the good things we want from the world around us.

Why we’re so afraid of succeeding.

Our fear of success comes from a number of places. For some, it comes from a place of low self-worth, or adverse childhood experiences that left them believing they would never have the things they want in this life. For others, this fear can be matching by inventive new realities, and stories in which they remain the victim of the story…rather than the hero.

We’re afraid we’ll turn into someone else

Many of us have this delusional idea that being successful or earning a lot of money will turn us into someone else. Money is an inanimate object. It does not have the power to brainwash us or trick us into turning into a nasty person. What it does have the ability to do is give us the freedom to fully express ourselves, and fully explore the experiences and behaviors we want to. No matter how successful we are, we are in control of how we act and what we believe. When we fail to take responsibility for who we are, however, it makes it easier to fear the success we don’t fully understand.

Suffering from imposter syndrome

Imposter syndrome is a psychological phenomenon that causes us to invest in the belief that we are inadequate or incompetent — despite any evidence that proves otherwise. It’s a corrosive and toxic state and one that can cause us to deny ourselves a number of poignant and beneficial opportunities. Not all imposter syndromes look alike, but they do all result in the same consequences: holding yourself back from the good things you deserve in this life.

Not strong enough to handle criticism

We live in an increasingly negative society and that means, often, (when we’re out there striving to do our best) we bring out the worst from every shadowy corner. Many of us have an intolerable fear of the judgment of others, and even greater fear that we will be denied or dejected if we put ourselves out there in any way. This fear holds us back and can lead to denying ourselves critical opportunities that might otherwise lead to happiness and fulfillment.

Uncomfortable in the spotlight

Observing and admiring the success of others is completely different from experiencing it ourselves. No matter what your definition of success looks like, it will come with it the admiring eyes of a lot of people. With those eyes comes pressure, both from the outside and the inside, and that can be a hard cross to bear. Not everyone is cut out for the spotlight, but that doesn’t mean you should hold yourself back or be afraid to thrive.

Fearing the shift

One of the most common reasons we allow our fear of success to hold us back is our overwhelming fear of change. As humans, we love the routine, and we tend to fear anything unknown or potentially uncontrollable. The problem with that, however, is that change is the only constant in this life. Everything around us is always changing — our relationships, our careers, everything. The only way to get through life happily is to embrace this change and embrace everything you want from a successful and fulfilled future.

Losing our support networks

When we succeed we grow, and growth inherently requires us to become larger and in need of different environments. When a plant outgrows its pot, it doesn’t just remain in the pot. To that means death. Instead, the pot is moved. Transferred somewhere else where its surroundings and the things that nourish it are a better fit. The same happens when we succeed in life. Success inherently means moving on and moving up. It means outgrowing people and jobs and homes. It means planting ourselves in a better environment, but fearing that change can hold us back needlessly.

How those fears can manifest

We often think of a fear of success manifesting as a lack of action, or maybe laziness. This fear manifests differently in everyone, however, and can be cleverly masked behind a number of clever coping mechanisms that are meant to keep us comfortably stuck and stagnant.

Inventive ingenuity

Inventors are people who shape reality around them to fit where they’re at. When an inventor is afraid of success, they don’t realize it, because they are constantly thinking up solutions to their problems and their complex emotional responses. The problem with this, however, is that it masks the fear and it masks the lack of real and meaningful movement forward. Inventors have to strip back their layers of thoughts and find honest and critical feedback in order to orientate themselves appropriately against their insecurities and the obstacles that are holding them back.

Half-hearted attempts

Half-hearted attempts are — perhaps — what we most commonly envision when we think of a F.O.S. When we make half-hearted attempts we do the bare minimum to convince ourselves (and others) that we’re taking the right steps, but just not getting where we want to be. In a way, it’s a sort of victim mentality and one that takes the responsibilities for our failures completely off our shoulders. The half-hearted fear can look and sound like, “I tried, but it didn’t work. No point trying again.” Or, it might sound a bit like, “I’m not good enough to do that.” Either way, it’s an excuse.

Self-sabotage

Self-sabotage occurs when our conscious mind is at odds with our unconscious self. More simply, this is when we commit to actions that seem helpful in the moment, but which ultimately undermine our confidence, strength, and relationships. We engage in self-sabotage regularly, and we do so because we have low self-worth, poor past experiences, or a feeling of losing control over our lives. The best way to fix this, of course, is to realize our own powers and step confidently into the successful future we envision for ourselves.

Disbelief

Disbelief is a complex form of fear and one that is hard to overcome without some seriously deep internal digging. Failing to believe in our ability to do well, or failing to believe in our ability to change comes from a place of deep-seated insecurity and low self-worth. When you fail to believe in yourself or those around you, you fail to recognize the depth of your own powers and — what’s worse — you fail to recognize the full extent of your own immense reach. Disbelief looks like out-of-hand dismissal, but it can often take the form of phrases like, “That would never work,” or “That’s outside of my skill set.”

Goal addiction

Though we generally think of F.O.S. as manifesting through laziness or lack of activity, that’s not always the case. Sometimes, our fear of success can manifest through an obsessive and almost compulsive need to set goals and achieve them. Rather than fearing to arrive on the doorstep of success, this type of person fears ever failing to achieve. They can’t slow down, and they can’t stop — because to them, that’s not success. Their fear of success is that it defines them entirely, and they are lost without it.

The best ways to overcome your fear of success.

The good news is — even if you have a crippling fear of getting exactly where you want to go — you can combat it and learn to create the future you want. By exploring our negative beliefs and re-channeling them into beliefs and techniques that bolster our strength and self-confidence, we can achieve all of our goals and more. It takes focus, however, and it takes having the courage to accept responsibility for our place in this life.

1. Explore and re-channel your negative beliefs

If you’ve got a massive fear of success that’s holding you back, then odds are it’s tied into your sense of self-worth or the insecurities you carry with you. These insecurities are toxic, and they are always linked to cognitive distortions that lead us astray or keep us chained to the things that no longer suit us. By exploring these distortions, we can cultivate a more accurate and honest vision of self, and use that shift in perspective to catapult ourselves into success.

Start developing a regular practice of exploring the negative beliefs that hold you back. Spend some time alone (just a few minutes each day) and really dig into the roots of your fear of success and explore them openly and honestly. Identify any hidden beliefs that reinforce the idea that you’re “not good enough” or you “can’t do it”. Once you know what these beliefs are, counteract them actively, and use current examples of wins — big and small — that prove just how powerful and worthy you are.

Rather than telling yourself things like, “I can’t do it, and I’m not worthy enough of having it,” reframe your inner dialogue with thoughts like, “It’s safe for me to win and I deserve to have every bit of happiness I want.” Mindful journaling is a great way to get-up-close with those thoughts, and it’s a great way to safely explore our innermost insecurities, worries or fears. Really open up on the paper, and let yourself feel your emotions as they come, and embrace the thoughts as they manifest. There’s power in exploring and re-channeling our negative beliefs, but it takes the work of actually doing it.

2. Cut out negative influences

Whether or not we succeed in this life is centered around our own internal perspective, but it’s also influenced by the type of environment we plant ourselves in. When we surround ourselves with negative people, negative experiences, it makes it that much harder to dig our way out to the top. It keeps us tangled in negativity and bogged down with negative emotions that make it impossible for us to achieve any real type of success.

We have to cut the negative influences out of our lives if we want to find happiness and true and lasting success. Rather than surrounding ourselves with people who reaffirm the belief that we’re not good enough or we can’t do it, we have to find people who encourage us to go for everything. Instead of remaining in environments that keep us angry, sad or scared, we have to find environments that can help us thrive and find the comfort we need to believe in ourselves.

Start small, and look for negative things in your life that can be replaced for more positive influences. If you have a poor diet that’s affecting your mood and energy levels, change it. If you’re surrounded by friends that keep you out partying when you should be prepping for the big meeting — get rid of them. At the end of the day, you’re the one who decides where to place your roots. Plant yourself somewhere you can truly bloom, rather than waiting for your environment to change (as if by magic). You have the power to control your life, and your success, but you’ve got to step up to the plate and take charge.

3. Spot the patterns and recalibrate

When we’re scared of reaching our full potential, it can cause us to revert into some negative patterns and coping mechanisms that further drive us away from what we want. In order to battle our way to success, we have to learn how to spot these patterns and recalibrate them in such a way that we can fight off their adverse effects. These self-sabotage patterns, negative coping mechanisms, and triggers are everywhere, and they must be mastered if we want to be happy, fulfilled and ready to conquer the day.

Delve back into your new mindful journaling practice, and shift gears from exploring your negative thoughts to mastering the negative patterns you keep slipping into. Look for triggers in your environment that make you feel uncomfortable, or things that cause you to revert back to that old fear and the false believe that you’re not good or somehow not worthy of succeeding.

Make a note of these triggers, and follow them through to the patterns and behaviors they manifest. Maybe one of your triggers is subtle feedback, which then leads to intense internal questioning and an erroneous confirmation of your most negative self-beliefs. Be honest, and don’t shy away from the insecurities that make you wriggle or feel embarrassed or shy. Only by embracing the negative ways in which you self-sabotage or otherwise prevent yourself from succeeding can you find your way to that shiny future you’ve been planning for all these years. Find positive exchanges you can make, and look for opportunities to spin your negative fears into positive beliefs.

4. Start saying no more often

One of the biggest reasons we often become distracted on our journey to the top is our incessant need to interfere or help with the lives and troubles of others. By creating more boundaries, and learning how to say “no” more often, we can stay focused on our own needs, and the actions and decisions we need to take in order to get where we want to go. More than that, we can remove the fear of standing up for ourselves — something which seriously impacts the confidence we need to create the future that we want.

Take a deep look inside and figure out both what you need and what you want from the world around you. Use these needs and desires to define your boundaries, and use these boundaries to further propel yourself forward. Though we don’t always consider it, a huge part of being a success is having the courage to turn away from the things that don’t suit, to the things that do.

Success doesn’t mean taking on more than you can handle. It doesn’t mean being superhuman, and it doesn’t mean smoothly or calmly shouldering the weight of the world. True success means setting meaningful goals that lead to happiness and fulfillment from within, and meeting those goals while retaining your inner peace and calm. It’s about doing what’s right for you and following your needs, rather than running blindly after the things other people want for you.

5. Focus on the journey

We have to redefine how we see success if we truly want to thrive. Some of us are goal-oriented people and that’s great. It can become crippling, however, when we start to focus only on the goal ahead and forget to focus on the process. Goals drive us and help us create the futures that we want, but they’re not truly an indication of success or failure. The true measure of success or failure is what you learn along the way, but that’s something that can only be gleaned by learning how to focus on the process, rather than the outcome.

Drop sight of that end-result and start getting present in the right-here and right-now. Look at your overall process and the lessons that it can offer you. By learning how to focus on the spaces between the endpoints, we can become masters of our skills and emotions, rather than just spectators. When you start to consider the journey, rather than just the arrival, your perspective of success and failure changes entirely.

Stop rushing and allow yourself to get real and present where you’re at right now. Dig into the meat of how you’re feeling in this moment, and really dig into the strengths and core abilities that can help launch you forward toward the future that you want. The middle bits of the journey are the best bits of the journey, they’re the parts that offer us the most beautiful perspectives and opportunities for growth and transformation, but we have to lose sight of our goals and start focusing on where we’re at right now.

6. Get uncomfortable

Part of the reason we are so scared of being successful has a lot to do with our fear of being uncomfortable. As humans, we are programmed to dislike change and we’re programmed to find the idea of instability terrifying. There is peace in the routine. Change is uncomfortable, and so is pushing ourselves harder than we’re used to — but it’s necessary if we’re truly seeking to create a more realized and fulfilling future for ourselves and our loved ones.

Spend some time getting uncomfortable, and spend time getting used to the idea of hanging out in grey areas. We only find ourselves when we push ourselves outside the bounds of where we’re comfortable. Start small. Go somewhere alone. Wear something you wouldn’t normally wear. Empower yourself little-by-little by exposing yourself little-by-little the fears that are keeping you paralyzed. Before you know it, you’ll be striding into the boardroom and demanding a raise. When you get used to being on shaky ground, nothing scares you anymore.

Getting uncomfortable takes time, and it takes building up — but it’s a journey with some transformative benefits for those that undergo it. Everyone is uncomfortable or unsure at some point in their life; we all experience instability. Accept the inevitability of discomfort on your trip to the top, and don’t let unknowns keep you from doing what you know you need to do. If the big, scary questions held us back from seeking the big, potentially scary answers, we’d still be banging rocks on the side of cave walls. Go for it and understand that everyone is uncomfortable. Embrace the uncertainty and enjoy the ride.

7. Small changes, small steps

In Japan, there is a business strategy known as “Kaizen” or “Continuous Improvement”. In this strategy, all levels of a company unite to proactively achieve small, regular, incremental improvements that add to the overall happiness and success of all involved. It combines the collective talents of all involved to create an engine for opportunity and growth, a process that can be adopted when looking at the personal process as well.

As a large company in Japan changes slowly over time, so should we too strive to improve our skills, desires and outlook — so that we can achieve the success we’re designing for ourselves. Success doesn’t happen over night, and when it does it is rarely long-lived. Truly transformative success happens only when we chip away slowly and efficiently at the things that we seek to accomplish or claim mastery over.

Just like any goal we set for ourselves, the success we aim for should be SMART; meaning they should it should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. We don’t just wake up and change our lives. We make small changes, over time, which add up to big results. All change is a journey, and a good resolution fits into that journey in a way that allows us to move forward comfortably. Don’t set goals that require you to be uncomfortable, in pain or struggling more than you were the year before. Instead, focus on creating small, realistic resolutions that can help you transform your overall picture.

Putting it all together…

Let go of your fear of success, and unleash yourself in ways that are both transformative and life-affirming. We find fulfillment through actioning our goals, and we do this by finding our confidence and establishing our self-worth. If you want to stop being scared of your full potential, you have to embrace the uncertainty of a future that is built entirely by you. You have to start reaching for success, but that can only be achieved through understanding, compassion, and perseverance.

Explore the negative beliefs that are holding you back, and exchange them for positive ones that encourage you to thrive. Take a good hard look at your life, and identify the negative influences that might be holding you back or preventing you from realizing your full potential. When you learn how to spot the patterns that enable your fear and self-sabotage, you can re-calibrate them and turn them into a force for good in your life. Stick up for yourself and learn how to say “no” more often, but also learn how to re-define how you see success so that you can focus on the growth and beauty the journey offers. Change is uncomfortable, but that’s part of what makes it so important and so special. Embrace the discomfort of going after what you want, and go for it with everything that you have. Take small steps and align them with the big change you want to see in your future. We have the power to succeed — in whatever fashion we wish — but we have to empower ourselves first. Make the choice to empower yourself today and start thriving in a life that is entirely of your own making.