What’s Holding You/Me Back?

Posted: February 16th, 2009 | Author: eetion | Filed under: reflecting, thinking, writing | 1 Comment »

What’s stopping you from even so much as trying to reach your goal?

We’ve All Been There

Have you ever talked to a person who was adamant in saying that there was no chance that they would be able to accomplish a particular goal or do a particular thing? I have. In fact, I was once that person myself. I remember telling myself, back when I was in high school, that “It would be nearly impossible to become awesome at soccer” – I had only known that the sport existed for about a year. Back when I wanted to start my own webpage, something which seemed like an awesome thing to do, I would think to myself, how in the world am I going to learn html -I was a teenager at the time. Or, back when I started college, I would think to myself how in the world am I ever going to be able to afford to live without my parents right after I graduate. Even now, with my latest ambition, at the ripe old age of 24, I’ve thought to myself starting an online business is an unreachable dream for me, I just don’t know how.

The lesson that I’ve learned from my past is that if I want it enough and can convince myself to repeatedly dedicate effort, I’ll get there – I’ve reached all those previous goals except the one about starting an online business. The problem was deciding to try and debating whether or not it was even a good idea to attempt reaching the goal given the looming uncertainty. That was then. Now that I’ve grown up and learned a little bit more, I know that if I’m to set out for a goal, uncertainty is not really something that gets to me; all I think about is the win, and the next task. But there’s one thing, applicable to this, that I remember my dad telling me as a kid and an almost-adult: He said “You’re afraid of success.”

Afraid of success? That. Makes. No. Sense. At the time, what my dad had told me made completely no sense at all to my being. I wanted success, I wanted to win; surely I was not afraid of success – how dare he say that to me.

For awhile, I brushed the idea aside as I didn’t understand it and blamed my misunderstanding of the idea on my dads, then offensive, matter-of-fact delivery of advice. No big deal, I know that when I finally do choose a goal, I’m all in. Yeah – yeah right, boy was I wrong.

It’s rare that a goal is all roses. Success requires change, and change has both positive and negative consequences.

Fear of Success: What will happen if you succeed?

Take A Long Hard Look

One day I decided to take a long hard look at my past accomplishments and try and figure out why they weren’t as amazing as I would’ve liked to have remembered. I tried to pick apart why I got medals in soccer for state games but never went on to play in college. I tried to figure out why I had the highest GPA only one for one year during high school. I tried to figure out why I stopped at html and didn’t continue on to css and other languages. All I did was ask the question why. From there, I gave myself some time to think about the answers.

It’s not trendy to acknowledge the negatives that might eventuate from success. We’re supposed to assume that all change will be positive. But unless we can prepare ourselves for a realistic picture of success we will push it away from ourselves.

Overcoming Fear of Success to Achieve Your Goals

I wasn’t scared to succeed at all! I was, though, very afraid of the change that I’d have to go through in order to succeed as well as the change I’d have to live with after I succeeded; the time I would have to put in, the dedication I would need, the change in how other people saw me, the potential that I might not be able to hang out with friends when I wanted, the uncertainty of not going by-the-book, the potential for other goals to fall by the wayside, the idea that I wouldn’t be using my college degree for anything related to the field I studied in, the fear that I’d have no time to pursue the opposite sex, the thought that I’d begin to break old promises I’d made, the -well, there were a lot of rocks uncovered when I finally took the time to investigate my shortcomings.

So I learned that it’s not really a fear of succeeding, it’s a fear of what might happen when you do succeed: that is what “fear of success” is.

Success is also frightening because success carries chaos with it. We call success Light Chaos.  But in your world, you’re geared and conditioned to have no chaos at all.  It’s an outgrowth of adolescence where life is so absolutely, unbelievably chaotic that you try to stabilize it with the absolutes — the always’s [sic] and never’s, the black’s and white’s — of adolescence.

Working with Fear of Success

It’s an attachment to repeating patterns in your life – a fear of change. In other words, you could call it an addiction.

Missing Passion

Now we both understand what the fear of success is. But lets not short change ourselves, this is a bigger issue than I’d previously thought, and if you’re still reading this maybe you can relate. Have you ever been so ALMOST passionate about something? I have. I have ALMOST been the most passionate person I can imagine on a board with four wheels (skateboard). I have ALMOST been so passionate about – you get the idea.

This “fear of success” business can not only circumvent a possible end goal, but it can also dampen your desire for a goal you currently have; It doesn’t just stop you from starting, it can even prevent you from reaching a goal that you’ve managed to start and progress towards. Even though you have a goal clearly set in your mind, so much that you can see it now –you might even be working towards it now- there’s a likelihood that there are several road blocking fears preventing you from reaching a deep burning passion that you might otherwise be oblivious of. Do you really want to miss out on something so powerful that can drive you to your goals?

Without the knowledge of the potential for fears to hang out and camp your ambitions, you might brush your lack of drive off as something insignificant that’ll pass by the time you wake up in the morning, like a minor setback. No, unless you resolve these issues now, they will remain in you and will be on the lookout for opportunities to trip you up. If you understand that, you know that doing away with the fear of success is very important. So important, in fact, that it’s in your best interest to take a time out and resolve your fears after you finish reading this (or as soon as possible).

Don’t Let The Fear Hang Around

Fortunately, identifying the fear is to win half the battle. That process basically involves indentifying all the hidden ways that success (achieving that goal) could negatively impact you. That means taking out a pen and a pad, text editor, flow diagram or whatever, and listing out all the potential negatives that you hadn’t previously took the time to pull out of your subconscious.

Once you’ve unmasked the fears, don’t feel satisfied and let them sit there – no, the longer you wait to come to terms with your fears, the longer those fears will stick around. You have to make it a priority to not only identify the fear, but also come to terms with whatever the fear is.

Maybe for you, once the fear is identified, the solution is obvious. Maybe it’s only a matter of doing a “negative thought brainstorm” as I’d mentioned in this post. Maybe the negative effects resulting from reaching the goal outweigh the positive; in which case it might be in your best interest to do away with the goal altogether – but isn’t it better to know that now, rather than investing so much of your time and energy to something you’ll end up tossing anyway?

Maybe your fears are completely unjustified and you actually have nothing to fear. Here’s an example: If I show up for this award ceremony, I wont be able to watch that documentary tonight. So your fear is not being able to watch the documentary? Maybe you can reframe and redesign your view of how you see your end goal: If I show up for this award ceremony, I’ll only miss 5 minutes of the documentary. There’s a lot of things you can do to redesign how you see your goal. Putting the fear out there in the first place helps you gain a whole new perspective on the fear itself. Now it’s in your conscious thoughts and you can appropriately deal with it: I’ll make it to the ceremony, and skip the opening credits, and I’ll watch the entire documentary when I get home, I might even be early.

At the end of all this, the strategy here is to know to identify the fears –all of them- and then decide what, if anything, to do with the fears that stand between you and your goal. If you decide to dump the goal, so what. If you decide to pursue the goal, come to terms with all of the fears even if you have to do it more than once. Coming to terms with your fears can do wonders for your goals.

---