1. Begin by Admitting Your Fears
The first step in solving any problem is admitting it actually exists. Fear can be a hard thing to face, and fear of success is a particularly hard thing to admit to in the first place. Try and get specific about the direction your fear lies in as soon as possible. It could be a fear of not coping, or you’re worried about losing touch with your dreams. Strange though it may sound, some people panic at the thought of success changing them. Others secretly fear that they don't deserve success at all.
Whatever the root source of your fear is, acknowledging that it is there, and being as specific as possible about it in your head, is an essential preparatory stage to get over before actually tackling it. Once you’ve looked your fear in the eye, you’re ready to to start using our eight steps to conquer it.
Whatever the root source of your fear is, acknowledging that it is there, and being as specific as possible about it in your head, is an essential preparatory stage to get over before actually tackling it. Once you’ve looked your fear in the eye, you’re ready to to start using our eight steps to conquer it.
2.Look Back with Pride
Take a moment to honestly review how you got to where you are today. You’ve undoubtedly coped with myriad challenges in your life and work to date, your current situation is just one more. Write down examples from your past where you’ve coped in similar circumstances and use these experiences as a well to draw confidence from.
3. Review Your Choices
Choices are what got you to where you are today. Be honest with yourself – are you happy with the choices you’ve made? Inevitably, not all of the ones you’ve made will have been optimal. Make a concrete list of the good ones and the bad ones that have led you here. Secretly suspecting you’ve made bad choices is a key ingredient in fear of success. By examining your previous choices dispassionately, you remove some of this fear’s fuel.
4. Change is Good
Only you can change yourself. Think of change as adding to, rather than subtracting from, you and your life. Face this aspect of your fear head on by drawing up a mental list of potentially positive outcomes and use this to counter any negative expectations regarding the changes success might bring.
5. Embrace Criticism
The success you want to achieve depends on your talent and hard work, not whether you “deserve” to succeed. Criticism, tough though it may by to receive, is key to improving so it should be welcomed rather than feared.
It is important to be able to put your ego aside and embrace genuine feedback as valuable. If someone offers what you feel is unwarranted criticism, turn it round – challenge them to prove their point, rather than making you defend yourself.
By making criticism your friend – instead of a foe you tremble before – you can confidently anticipate success, rather than worrying about the feedback you’ll have to expose yourself to in order to achieve it.
6. Accentuate the Positive
Fear of success is often a natural byproduct of our brains’ tendency to dwell on the negative, so we really do have to make a conscious effort to accentuate the positive. We’re not simply talking about wishy-washy positive thinking here, this is a real mental skill that must be learned and cultivated.
7. Remember Why You Started
It helps identify old issues that may be lurking behind your current sense of unease at the prospect of actually achieving your goals. If your initial drive for success was based on potentially negative factors such as “showing someone they’re wrong”, you may need to recontextualize your motivations to be able to fully embrace the prospect of success. As with most of our points, honesty is the key here to truly making progress.
8. Accept the Future’s Challenge
Fear of success often simply boils down to nervousness about the scale of the further challenges success may bring. Rather than hiding behind this fear and stalling any chances of wider progress, take the time to list what these challenges may actually be and consider them each in isolation.Once you start breaking things down in concrete terms, you’ll often find that what seemed like a potentially terrifying mountain to climb is actually just a relatively simple set of sequential tasks to be executed.
9. Own Your Weaknesses
One core component of many people’s fear of success is the lurking terror that any kind of success will shine an unpleasant spotlight on a whole slew of critical weaknesses they have somehow managed to keep hidden up until now.
That might sound a little far-fetched to some, but I’m sure a significant percentage of you will be reading that last sentence with an uncomfortable sense of recognition.
The truth is that everyone has weaknesses and they are nothing to be ashamed of – providing you’re clear on what they are and have a plan to address them. Look your weaknesses in the eye and start making concrete plans to address them, rather than sweeping them away in the corner of your subconscious.
You’ll find two things happening when you start to do this: many of the supposed weaknesses will turn out to be imaginary, and you’ll face the prospect of future success with much less fear.
source: blog.bidsketch.com
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