I must admit, I have never really understood the whole ‘fear of success’ thing.
Fear of failure. Sure. That made sense to me because I have experienced this emotion myself. Come to think of it, as a writer/blogger trying to establish myself, I often do battle with this particular culprit.
But fear of success, I just couldn’t get my head around it. I mean who starts a business or a major project and doesn’t want to be successful?
I finally understood the concept (and even related to a few points, much to my surprise) when I read Peter Shallard’s great free eBook Seek and Destroy. Peter runs an excellent blog called The Shrink for Entrepreneurs. Do yourself a favor and take a look.
Seek and Destroy is a fabulous eBook based on the top 10 roadblocks that hold back entrepreneurs. Peter discusses how to identify and most importantly overcome these obstacles.
This inspired me to do some searching around the Internet for other people’s interpretations and advice on the fear of success and how to deal with it.
Lifehack – Fear of Flying Facing the Fear of Success
Dumb Little Man – Overcoming the Fear of Success
Tiny Buddha – Overcome the Fear of Success 6 Ways to Start Thriving
While some of these posts are older, I don’t believe that matters because let’s face it, our fears don’t come with use by dates.
Do you suffer from a fear of success?
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Hey, Thea. I have never really struggled with the fear of failure, but I have battled the fear of success for most of my life. As a result, I’ve had too many occasions where I’ve sabotaged myself when I was close to success.
I know the root cause of this behavior comes from being the child of an alcoholic. I learned quickly as a child how to deal with failure, but success was something I didn’t dare to dream about. It was like Lucy with the football taunting Charlie Brown to kick the ball. To prevent this from happening, I would pull the football away myself.
From what I’ve read, this is a pretty common story of people who grew up with alcoholics. I hadn’t heard of the ebook you listed. I look forward to reading it. Thanks for sharing the information.