But You Are Afraid of Success

Have you heard people talk about being afraid of success?

I hear about it every once in a while and honestly, most of the time I’ve just brushed it off and thought that it definitely doesn’t apply to me. Why would I be afraid of the things I want the most?

But then I started thinking about it.

And I realized that in a way I am afraid of success. Now let’s see if you are too.

You’re not your future self yet

It’s easy to picture your perfect future and imagine yourself confidently doing all those big and impressive things you want to do.

Maybe you picture yourself eating breakfast in an Instagram-perfect kitchen in a house that costs 2 million. Or perhaps you see yourself being interviewed by Oprah or giving a speech to 5000 people. Or maybe your biggest dreams are all about travel and you see yourself hiking in rainforests and solo traveling through southern Asia.

Because in the future you can easily do all of those things, right?

But what about today? Could you do those things right now?

It takes time

There’s nothing wrong with trusting that you’re going to figure it all out somehow and that your future self will be more capable of doing all these scary things than you are. I definitely do that too.

I mean, I am more confident than I was five years ago and I am also more efficient, braver, and have much better social skills. That should mean that five years later I’m going to be even better, right?

I have every reason to believe that. And I believe that you are getting better and more capable all the time as well.

Are you building the right future

There’s just one problem though. If there is a huge difference between your future self and who you are today, you might not be building the future you want.

Our mindset matters and the actions we take matter even more. If you dream of being a successful motivational speaker, but right now you are still very shy and have a hard time enunciating clearly and conveying your ideas to others, are you really building the future you want?

Or if you dream of being a famous author, but right now you spend your days scrolling through online writing communities and avoiding actually writing anything, how exactly are you making any progress?

The problem is not just that you are wasting your time and postponing the date when you will finally reach your goal, but that you are also actively building the kind of future you don’t want.

What you do, matters. If you spend your time scrolling through writing tips but never actually writing, you’re becoming a wannabe-author instead of an author. And I know you don’t want that.

Recognize your fear

Everyone wants to feel good about themselves and it’s not fun to admit that you have a problem or that you have an annoying challenge to overcome. But to change your life, you need to know where you are right now and who you are.

Now. I want you to imagine a day in your future self’s life, living your dream. Take your time with this and be as clear as you can. What is she wearing? What city she’s in? What is she doing? How is she feeling?

And then imagine that that day is now.

Can you handle it? Could you give that speech? Could you confidently wear those clothes? Would you feel at home in her home? Would you like to wake up today and get ready to do all those things that you imagine your future self doing?

If not, you might be afraid of success. And that’s something you want to fix.

You need to challenge yourself

Making your dreams come true is serious business and you can’t just wait for things to magically happen to you. You need to take action and do things that you feel you’re not ready to do.

No one has a step-by-step plan from square one to the finish line. Often what you need to do is simply try things and see what happens.

And when you want to achieve a goal that feels a bit scary, you just have to find the courage to take the leap and go for it.

If you want to have lots of cool and successful friends, you have to start reaching out to people. Even when you feel like they’ll scoff at your message (there’s a good chance they won’t).

If you want to become a successful influencer, you have to start posting content even if you feel like you’re not interesting enough or that your content isn’t good enough.

If you want to be a writer, you have to write, even if you feel like you can’t write that international bestseller today. You can write that some other time, but today your job is to simply write something.

You are capable of so much more than you think

I know that life is scary and you are worried about so many things that could go wrong. It’s natural to be afraid of success when you’re not quite ready for all those things you dream of.

It’s all ok. What you need to focus on, is simply taking steps forward and challenging yourself. Wonderful things can happen when you just decide to send that one message you are afraid to send or to book that trip you have been dreaming of.

I have always been quite shy, but now looking back, it’s so obvious which experiences helped me the most in overcoming my shyness. It was the biggest and scariest things I did, the times when I took big risks and still survived.

You are capable of doing all those things you dream of doing. But to get there, you need to be brave. You need to take chances and stop postponing things you know you need to do. Challenge yourself and you’ll see that the things that you are afraid of aren’t really even that scary.

Final thoughts on fear of success

It’s completely normal to be afraid of success. Your dream life might be very different from your current life and it’s only natural to be a bit nervous when you think about all the things ahead of you.

But you are brave. You have what it takes. You can do things you are scared of and survive.

I challenge you to do one thing you are scared to do this week. Just one thing. Something you know would help you forward, but you have been putting off because you don’t know what would happen or you feel like people would laugh at you.

I mean, no one is going to laugh at you, and even if they did, so what? You are still allowed to do it. I promise I won’t laugh, I think it’s impressive when people have the courage to put themselves out there and do exactly what they want to do.

Let me know your thoughts on this topic and what one scary thing you will do this week!