Feature Article | Why People Are Afraid of Success (Excerpted from Lesson 56 in the ‘How to Coach Anyone’ Book)
January 31, 2011 by Andrea J. Lee
Filed under Uncategorized
Because success, while desirable, does come with significant risk.
Meaning they might ‘come back down’ after they ‘make it.’
Fear of loss is usually a more powerful feeling than the pleasure of success. (That’s important to know, and it explains why people don’t always do the cool/great things they could do.)
Because success can take on a life of its own.
Some folks are afraid of being consumed by their success or becoming the tail of the dog, where success wags them.
One can lose control of the ‘situation’, and that’s not a feeling that people like.
Because success will force a change in a person’s source of energy.
If you’ve gotten used to the noise, smell, vibration and tug of an internal combustion engine, it’s quite unnerving to drive an electric car. Missing are the familiar feelings/sensations that come with an internal combustion engine.
The same is true of success. It’s eerie; it can be so quiet and unfamiliar. One gets suspicious. If nothing else, success is stressful, given it’s a fundamentally different feeling than striving.
Because success may redefine the person.
We all want to change a little bit perhaps, but how many of us truly want to be redefined? Yet that’s what success will do in many cases.
Success will have us see life very differently, we’ll be operating differently with perhaps a different group of people and our environments may well change substantially. True, the core of you may not change but just about everything else probably will. That’s scary!
Because success is a new territory.
Anything new/different is bound to prompt cautiousness, even success. Even if it’s something you’ve wanted your entire life.
New territories, as exciting as they are, still carry a degree of risk and someone who is risk adverse will slow down their success pace/track in order to feel safer. Just human nature.
Can you relate to these points? What will you do to eliminate fear of success in your future? Leave your comments below.
