How to overcome your fear of success

In the last weeks I had a series of long chats with a dear friend, who’s an astoundingly successful businessman and who observed that many people he knew, who were quite capable of sustained success in business, failed to take advantage of opportunities they came upon.

He said they had a fear of success.

This statement took me aback.

I was quite clear on a fear of failure, kiasu 驚輸, we know that very well in Singapore business. But a fear of success?

So I set to thinking abut examples in both my own life and in the lives of colleagues, and yes i do believe some of them have displayed a fear of potential success and the potential impact this could have on their lives.

How do I know when i have a fear of success?

While Abraham Maslow coined the term Jonah Complex, to describe people who are afraid of greatness, Psychologist Matina Horner first diagnosed the fear of success in the early 1970s to address her views that she saw women, especially, sabotaging their potential for success. Since then, however, most scientists and psychologists agree that fear of success exists for both men and women.

The biggest problem for many people is that their fear of success is largely unconscious. They just don’t realise that they’ve been holding themselves back from doing something great. Unless someone points it out to them, but this has happened rarely in my experience.

If you experience the following thoughts or fears, you might have a fear of success on some level:

• You feel guilty about any success you have, no matter how small, because your friends, family, or co-workers haven’t had the same success. You may believe this is humility, but its not.
• You don’t tell others about your accomplishments, also because you believe you should be humble.
• You avoid or procrastinate  on big projects, especially projects that could lead to personal recognition. You may believe that this stems from a fear of failure, but it’s quite likely to be the opposite.
• You frequently compromise  your own goals or agenda to avoid conflict in a group, or even conflict within your family. You may have no evidence that it could cause problems, but you have persuaded yourself that your success will cause problems with others.
• You feel, subconsciously, that you don’t deserve to enjoy success in your life.
• You believe that if you do achieve success, you won’t be able to sustain it. Eventually you’ll fail, and end up back in a worse place than where you started. So you think, “why bother?”

What are the Causes?

Fear of success has several possible causes:

• We fear what success will bring – for example, loneliness, new enemies, being isolated from our family, longer working hours, or being asked for favours or money. I found this in PNG where the social system meant that successful people gave to their less successful family members- so many people retreated from higher paying roles as they would only have to give most of their success away.
• We’re afraid that the higher we climb in life, the further we’re going to fall when we make a simple mistake.
• We fear the added work, responsibilities, or criticism that we could face.
• We fear that our relationships will suffer if we become successful. Our friends and family will react with jealousy and cynicism, and we’ll lose the ones we love.
• We fear that accomplishing our goals, and realising that we have the power to be successful, may actually cause an intense regret that we didn’t act sooner.

Strategies for Overcoming this Fear 

You can use several different strategies to overcome your fear of success. The good news is that the more you face your fears, bring them to the surface, and analyse them rationally, the more you’re likely to weaken those fears.

1. Bring some realism into your future thinking. Take a realistic look at what will happen if you succeed with your goal. Don’t look at what you hope will happen, or what you fear will happen. Instead, look at what is likely to happen.  Take at least 15 minutes to examine the issues, and write down your answers to these questions:

• How will my friends and family honestly react if I accomplish this goal?
• How will my life change?
• What’s the worst that could happen if I achieve this goal?
• What’s the best that could happen?
• Why do I feel that I don’t deserve to accomplish this goal?
• How motivated am I to work toward this goal?
• What am I currently doing to sabotage, or hurt, my own efforts?
• How can I stop those self-sabotaging behaviours?

2. Use your previous experiences. You have probably had successes in the past, so why not use this experience to subtly change the questions and tie them into your past experiences.  Again take 15 minutes to think through these questions.

• How have friends and family reacted to your success in the past?
• What changed in your life after past successes?
• Did any bad things happen after your previous success?
• What motivated you to achieve past goals?
• Think though how you made your previous decisions that resulted in success and copy.

3. Face fear with a plan for success. For instance, suppose you don’t push yourself to achieve a promotion, and the biggest reason is because you secretly fear that the additional income and recognition would jeopardise your family relationships and your integrity. You’re worried that you would be so busy working to maintain your success that you’d never see your family, and you might be forced to make choices that would destroy your integrity.

To overcome these fears, start by addressing your workload. You could set a rule for yourself that you’ll always be home by 7 p.m. Or you’ll set aside a day to make up for lost time with your family. You could tell these plans to your boss if you’re offered the new position, and negotiate family time, or extra days off for extended periods overseas..

If you avoid success as you believe that this particular project will compromise your integrity, you always have a choice. First factually ascertain if the project will affect your integrity. If you set maintaining your integrity as your top goal, then you’ll always make the right choice.

By creating backup plans that directly address your fears, you can often eliminate those fears entirely.