- Are you an entrepreneur who knows you have a great product or service?
- Despite all of your efforts, do you feel you have not quite reached the success you were aiming for?
- Could it be that you are actually terrified of succeeding beyond your wildest dreams?
When I first read Marianne Williamson’s quote, ‘Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.’ – I was confused. Being afraid of success seems so counterintuitive that it is difficult to believe it is true. Doesn’t everyone want success? Is that not what we are all striving for? 
As I thought more about this, I was taken back 50 years to my high school assembly. I had been called up by the headmistress for an impromptu performance. I opened my mouth & started singing & I sounded like a rat squealing. My entire body was tense, my throat was tight as it could be & the air was barely making it through. This was a few weeks after I had won first place in a small regional singing contest. I had surprised the crowd & the judges. The headmistress called me ‘a budding Usha Iyer.’
I was shocked, surprised, elated & terrified! Then, a few weeks later, the headmistress decided to call me to perform in front of the school & I bombed. That was the last time I was asked to sing in school. Although the immediate embarrassment was excruciating, settling back into being an ordinary student & meeting regular expectations was a huge relief.
I went from being the best singer in the school back to a nonentity. As I remembered that moment, I realized how true it was that I had been terrified of success. Being that visible was very uncomfortable. One of the scariest things about being successful is becoming more visible. Most of us are so insecure and used to finding fault with ourselves that we are terrified that everyone will know we are not good enough when we become more visible.
All of our insecurities about how we look, how we sound, how we speak, and what we do get magnified in our minds & stop us in our tracks. Mediocrity is so much more comfortable. Minimal effort & minimal rewards, maybe, but at least it also means minimal scrutiny and criticism from the outside.
The good news is that once we are aware that we are afraid, we can disempower that fear. There are four steps to overcoming our fear of success & taking action.
- Acknowledging that we are afraid /even terrified of success and how that fear results in self-sabotage
- Uncover the story behind the fear – ” I will become unpopular if I become too successful.” or “My friends will feel uncomfortable around me. ” or “People like me do not do things like that, etc. Part of the confusion & terror I felt after winning was that there was a sub-conscious story about “people like us do not become successful performers. That is beneath us. We become doctors, engineers & lawyers but not performers.’ Today, when I stand up to speak or sell, it is still that same story that comes up first, but I am now skilled in step 3, which is
- Disempower the Story – Using visualization, & meditation to travel back in time to the memory that created the story we can use EFT tapping to deactivate the story & disempower it, and then we
- Create a future memory- we use the same techniques to travel forward in time & cement the sensation of the successful event.
Clients who have worked with me on undoing their fear of success went on to release songs that were aching to come out & be heard, doubled their income, paid off long-standing debt, and so much more.
Book a call & let us talk about what success could look for you.
We will look at your goals, & what is stopping you. I will give you my best recommendation for moving forward. It is an hour long. It is FREE (value $333). I have opened up some spots to help you work through this by the end of this year so you start 2024 ready to go.
