There are so many things that people are afraid of. Whether it be the fear of success, the fear of failure, the fear of not being good enough, the fear of being found out. Today I wanted to share with you some of these fears and what you can do to overcome them.
I remember when I first started out in business, I was so scared of it not working, that that was kind of like my driver, and then as it kind of progressed through I had some different fears come up. Some different fears would creep in. Now some of the things from taking to clients, and speaking to friends of mine who are doing similar things to what I do, there is not only the fear of failure that is a bit of a driver, but also the fear of success. The fear of success can appear in different ways. It can look like you kind of get some goals and you get some results under your belt and then you kind of, for some reason the whole thing blows up in your face. You might lose some clients, you might lose some money, you might have the worst month ever, off the back of having some really great months.
A really awesome book that I’ve read, and studied, and listened to over, and over again on an audio version over the years, is a book by Gay Hendricks and it’s called “The Big Leap.” He talks about these things being Upper Limit problems. Upon reading this book, you might find that you kind of hit glass ceilings. Where you hit a particular income level, or you make a certain number of sales, and then I like to think of it a little bit like the speed wobbles, where things just go a little bit pear-shaped, you might lose your motivation, you might get sick, you might have a really bad review, or something kind of comes way out of left field, that you’ve never, ever expected before.
That COULD be you literally sabotaging your own success, because a lot of people are afraid. They’re afraid that when they hit their potential, or they start hitting their potential that the world is going to look all of a sudden very, very different to what is has been previously. They might think, and I know that this was for me, I was really worried about outshining other people. I was really worried that my friends would be like, “I don’t know who you are and I’m done being friends with you.” So I was worried about a lot of loss that would come up as part of me achieving success over the years, and getting further, and further along.
I personally didn’t worry so much about the failure option. Although that has come up as a really big thing for me over the years as well. My mindset, for the most part, has been “I will not fail”, “I know that this can work. I know that this can do great things. I know that what I do and how I do it really does transform and change lives” and I know that that’s true. But the fear of failure, like what if I don’t meet my potential? Hasn’t been a really been a big enough driver for me to really kind of get going. There will be some different things that come up for you, as you think about what happens when things maybe don’t go quite your way. Are you sabotaging yourself? Is it an Upper Limit problem? Is it just that you are tired?
If it is just the latter then that’s okay. You don’t LITERALLY create absolutely everything that happens in your world – not everything is sabotage.
You didn’t create absolutely everything that has happened in your world, or the negative stuff that’s happened in your world. But a lot of time you can backtrack to the actions that you undertook, maybe a few months ago, that have resulted in you being here, where you are right now at this exact moment.
I think a big thing that happens with this is the success pathway for many of us is so uncharted. It is unfamiliar because, you know, you haven’t done this before, right? You haven’t grown a business before, you haven’t made a quarter of a million dollars, of half million dollars, or a million dollars, or 25 million dollars. You haven’t done that before, and a lot of the stuff that goes on on a conscious level, like at the front of your brain, as well as on an unconscious level, at the back of your brain, stuff can happen, stuff can come up.
So one of the big things that I invite you to do is actually go back, and if things aren’t going the way that they are going, that you want them to go right now, go and do a little bit of analysis. Have you implemented? Have you exhausted every single avenue that you know how, to be able to get past this thing? Have you learned something and then not done the work? Have you gone and done the work but only partially implemented? Did you go and do everything that you were told? Maybe that’s another thing to take a look at.
There will be some different things that have gone on throughout the course of your business, and throughout the course of your journey doing this, that will give you some indicators of whether you are more motivated by the fear of failure or by the law of success, right? Or the fear of success, or the I will do everything that I can to make sure that I don’t fail.
When you know what your personal motivator is, that’s how you can then implement it, and instigate something that allows you or creates a space for you to be able to propel forward, and to actually use that as leverage. You’ve just got to get leverage over yourself, right? So that you can get out there and do what it is that you need to do.
That book that I’m referring to, in a lot of things that we’ve been talking about today is called “The Big Leap,” by Gay Hendricks. You can get it on audio version, PDF version, like an eBook version, you can get it in print. I would recommend getting all of them, and then listen to them, and then listen to it again, and then listen to it again. When things aren’t going quite right for you, or maybe things are going really well for you, make sure that you’ve got these things in place to enable you to keep moving forward and kick those goals that you’ve set for this year, that you really, truly deserve to achieve.
Nicola