Fear Of Failure Vs Fear Of Success - Which Is Worse?
Author
Damon Cart
Date
Oct 01, 2018
Content
Author
Fear of failure is pretty obvious.
It's when you fear trying something because you're afraid to fail. You're afraid of the disappointment. Failing might hurt your ego or maybe you will feel like you're letting others down.
But some of you use fear of failure to drive your success. Maybe you've used this approach to achieve great things.
Whether you're allowing fear of failure to limit you from trying something you would like to achieve or you're using fear of failure to achieve, fear is limiting you either way.
More on this in a moment.
Fear of success is a catch phrase that echoes incessantly in personal development and self-help circles.
What if I told you there is no such thing?
People jump my case when I say this. They go on and on about how fear of success has held them back so many times. This tells me how heavily invested some people are in this idea.
Investing your attention and focus into this idea is what's holding you back, not fear of success.
Are you really afraid to get what you want? No, you're not.
What you might be afraid of is how it might change you or how it might affect your relationships with people who are important to you and possibly how people you don't even know might think of you.
For example if you make a lot more money, people might think you're a greedy asshole.
What you really fear is change, not success.
When you add this twisted concept about being afraid to succeed, it's like adding more noise to an already noisy situation.
So stop doing that.
The problem with fear of failure and fear of success is their common denominator, fear.
Often clients come to me wanting me to help them get rid of fear. This would be dangerous.
Fear is important. It alerts you to the things you should pay attention to. It prevents you from making stupid mistakes.
If you let it control you though, it will limit you.
Fear is unhealthy and toxic to your mind and body if you carry it around.
Think of fear as an alarm clock. It can wake you up to threats and bad situations you've stayed in for too long, which is good. This is the purpose of fear.
But just like an alarm clock, once you're awake, you shut off the alarm and get to work.
Carrying around fear is like carrying around your buzzing alarm clock with you all day to make sure you stay awake. Not only would no one want to be around you if you did that, by the end of the day you would be stressed out and irritated.
When you experience fear ask yourself what the fear is communicating to you. Receive the message even if it's irrational. Just doing this very simple thing, hearing the message, will often cause the fear to go away because the part of you using fear to communicate has successfully delivered the message.
Sometimes this won't make the fear go away though. This happens when the fear is more deeply rooted.
Take the time to find where the fear is occurring in your body. Locate it and notice the kinesthetic qualities of it. Is it heavy or light, warm or cold? Does it have a texture to it? Does it have a movement.
Often it will feel like your fear has no movement, but all feelings have movement even if it's very subtle like a vibration.
Fear is often a feeling that you resist and resisting it makes it more intense, which often gives fear a slow grinding movement to it inside you or a feeling similar to it.
Create a space in your body that surrounds the fear. Allow the fear to expand in that space.
This may be scary at first because it can feel like you're being consumed by fear, but as you allow it to expand, you'll realize that it starts to dissipate and become less intense.
Expand the space around the fear to extend outside of your body. Keep allowing that space to grow and allow the fear to expand with it. Keep going until the fear dissolves into the larger space that you are.
How do you feel now?
Get started on that new endeavor now!
Check congruence within yourself for the goals you want to achieve and check ecology to make sure that getting what you want won't harm the relationships with the people who mean the most to you.
Damon Cart
NLP Coach and Trainer
Santa Cruz, CA
Damon Cart
Author
Damon Cart is considered to be a natural talent by some of the best NLP trainers in the world. His approach to guiding and teaching students brings to their awareness that they've been doing NLP all of their lives without realizing it and he empowers them with skills and resources to thrive and reach their full potential. With the understanding of how Neuro Linguistic Programs create oneβs experience a person can then take charge of those programs and create the experience and the life they want. By taking this approach into his own rigorous, daily NLP practice Damon has been able to rapidly accelerate his progress in learning, coaching clients and teaching workshops.
