What if I don’t fail? How to overcome fear of success
Are you scared to fail or are you actually scared of what'll happen if it works out?
Do you ever experience a fear of success? You have probably heard of a fear of failure; something you might’ve struggled with for years. But your fear of failure might actually be a fear of success disguised as a desire to not mess up. And we are going to talk about that fear of success in this guide.
Yes, you read that right. This is a guide to dealing with your fear of success.
I know most people are looking for guides to deal with fear of failure. To learn how to keep their head held high whenever something they tried did not work out. It’s a tale as old as time: no one wants to be found lacking and so we choose to just not try.
That’s how you keep failure at bay.
If it’s so common and a lot of people wish to know how to keep from feeling utterly defeated, then why would I want to write about dealing with the fear of success?
Because a lot of the time, failure might not really be the thing we fear.
Let me tell you the story of when I first started this blog. A long, long time ago.
Short summary for quick readers
- Sometimes the fear you're feeling is not a fear of failur, it's a fear of success: the fear of what would happen if it worked out.
- Fear of failure is usually characterized by insecurity and a feeling of 'not good enough'. Failure means everything will stay the same and nothing changes.
- Success means things will be different, expectations will be higher and even though you feel confident, you are afraid of what will happen next.
- Fear of success can present itself in different ways: procrastination: doing a lot but not the things you should be.
- Or you don't challenge yourself (aiming too low so the task never gets done) – or you challenge yourself too much; striving for constant perfection.
- Working hard while still thinking: "if I quit now, I still gave it my all".
- The fear you feel is completely fictional and not rooted in actual danger. Usually it's very irrational: things that could never happen or that are the worst case scenario.
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How it all began: with fear of failure
Even though my blog has not been online for that long yet, I spent a really long time making it, and perfecting it. At first I was watching webinars, YouTube tutorials and doing a lot of research about the how-to’s of setting up a blog, gaining traffic and to make my blog into something profitable. Something that could sustain me while doing what I loved; writing.
I spend days and nights reading about blogging and Pinterest, dissecting successful blogs to figure out what made them work. Whenever I finished a book, article or video, I would look for more.
There was always more.
After a while I spent all my time thinking about my blog, thinking of ideas, writing articles in my head, looking for more information and thinking of all the knowledge I might still lack. All this kept me from actually writing anything. I worked on the layout of the blog, I tried out different pin designs in Canva, I did a lot of things to prepare for the launch of my blog, except writing the articles I needed to actually have a blog.
And I realized I was scared to start. I was afraid of actually doing it because: what if it did not work out? My fear of failure kept me paralyzed and even though I seemed very busy with all the research I was doing, I was not actually doing anything. This is what fear of failure can do to you.
I was making the unconscious decision to be stagnant while faking progress.
But fear of failure is not the only thing that can make you feel like you’re running on a treadmill. Because when I decided I would rather try and fail than never have tried at all, my perspective changed.
A new fear came around
Finally I actually started writing. Every day I wrote and wrote, but I still felt like I was not doing enough. Whenever I was thinking about my blog and the things that would happen if I finally launched it, I would stress out completely. This stressed out feeling would make me decide to read another chapter in a book instead of working on my blog post, it would make me go out for a run instead of sitting down behind my computer.
Every opportunity of distraction that was handed to me, I seized.
Why?
At first I did not understand. I did not feel scared of failing anymore. All I felt was excitement thinking about my blog and I was eager to see what would happen when I finally launched the website I’d been working on for so long. I knew failure was an option but I also knew that not trying was worse. So why was I still looking for ways out?
I finally realized what was happening. When I thought about my blog and about what it would feel like if I actually made money from my blog, if I truly managed to get a physical reward for all my work, I freaked out.
Because what was I supposed to do then?
Would I have to register my website as a business? What if people were dissatisfied with the product they purchased? Was I even up to the task? All these questions about the practical aspects of running a blog popped up like mushrooms. Small fungi that nestled and spread a feeling of fear.
Suddenly I understood that when I stopped being afraid of failure, my anxious brain needed something else to be scared of. And what is more scary than actually being successful in your endeavors?
Failure is stagnation
When we think of failure, we think we fear the feeling of not being good enough. The feeling of having tried something and having it blow up in our faces. We think about the other people that have seen us fail and how they will laugh at us, ridiculing our attempts and shaming us for trying.
But failure (in most cases) just means you’re back where you started. Nothing changed. If you think about it, from that perspective failure actually seems like the saver option. Because everything will stay exactly as it started out. You may have lost some time, maybe some money and sometimes you also might have lost a little face. But the truth is that a lot of the time we give up before even getting to a point where other people would notice our failure.
If you really, really think about it, failure isn’t all that scary. Because you’ll be the exact same person you were.
Of course this does not apply in all situations, but right now I am talking about the kind of failure that comes from learning a new skill, starting a business, enrolling in a class, flirting with someone in a bar. Things that you could add to your life, not risking parts of it to get something.
Success is way more frightening.
Success means a new situation. A position that you have not been in before, one that you will have to adjust to. And change is scary.
Success means you have a successful business now, it means you’ve finished your classes and you got a degree that you have to use. It means you walked up to this person in a bar and they’re interested in you too so you are going on a date.
Isn’t that still fear of failure though?
Yes, in some way it seems like it. When we succeed we fear that our success will be short lived. So we spend hours thinking about the new situation we’re in now and how we can handle it without completely tanking it. And just as fear of failure, fear of success is based on a completely fictional form of fear: something that has not even happened yet and we’re still obsessing about it.
Fear of failure causes us to feel paralyzed, to sabotage ourselves in ways that subconsciously can make us fail. We actually never get to where we want to be going because we fear that the end result will be a negative one and so we stop trying. When we fear success, we don’t worry so much about maybe failing. We know we can get through a few years of school unharmed and we’ll get a paper with our name on it to show for it.
That will be the easy part.
Failure feels easier when you fear success
But then we fear that we are just not good enough to be whatever we’re studying to be. Imposter syndrome kicks in and we spend our days scared of the new responsibilities that come with our new found success. Yet again we sabotage ourselves to the point where we give up or procrastinate until success is not even a possibility anymore.
Failure seems like the saver option.
Could you ever imagine a situation in which failure feels like the saver option?
I would have never guessed that I would prefer failure over success. Ever. But it happens. Because our brain craves safety above all else. Comfort. The familiar. And so our brain will always tell us to choose the save option.
When you are working on something and fear of failure pops up, it is your brain trying to discourage you from stepping outside the carefully crafted comfort zone. When you ignore its pull and keep on pushing forward, excited about this new chapter in your life, your brain will think of a new way to discourage you.
Because the unknown is just way too scary to just venture into.
How to recognize your fear of success?
Fear of success can show up in many different ways. And all are difficult to spot. Especially since you might mistake them for fear of failure. Fear of success shows its face right after you decide not to be scared anymore.
And for me the first sign was procrastination.
Procrastination is anxiety’s best friend
A very subtle sign that can be very hard to identify. Because you always have a ‘good’ reason why you’re not working on the things you should be working on. And if you don’t, then you’ll find a good reason. Work is always a good reason. Or studying for school, helping a friend, working out… everything can be a good reason when you make up a good enough story.
And so you work on a lot of different things, feeling ever so productive while not actually really doing anything to achieve the goals you want to achieve. Procrastination can take many forms too. You can be too ‘busy’ to work on your goals but you can also be very busy working on the wrong things that are related to your goal. Like spending all your time shopping for the right outfit to run a marathon instead of actually training for it.
It is good to be wary of all the different forms procrastination can take.
You don’t challenge yourself. Or too much
Another way that fear of success can show up is in the challenges you set for yourself.
Whenever I was not procrastinating, I forced myself to write every night before bed for at least five minutes. I don’t know how many of you are writers but I am going to assume most of you have had to write something that was longer than half a page long at some point in your life. By writing for five minutes every day you’ll finish your first blog post maybe within a month.
If you are writing fast.
This excludes editing and all the other tedious tasks that come with writing a blog post. At this pace I would finish my first five blog posts within half a year and still would have to write fifteen more to be consistent in my posting.
I aimed too low to make sure I wouldn’t have to think about succeeding for another year or more.
Because chances are I would never actually launch my blog.
Another way this could show up is when you aim way too high, wanting only the best. I struggle with this as well. I always want my blog posts to be perfect, editing them endlessly and reading them over and over again to make sure they’re just right.
Guess how many blog posts I post when I get into this frenzy of perfectionism?
Right. None.
Quitting is always an option
And if things took way too long because I was always ‘busy’ but trying my ‘best’ (I was writing every day! How could this not have worked out!?), I would have a good reason and excuse to quit.
Because at least I tried and gave it my all.
I have thought about quitting so many times, all under the guise of ‘I just don’t have time for it’. Especially when the writing was going well. I would get that feeling of excitement again, that ‘I might just be able to actually do this!’-feeling, and a few days later I would feel discouraged again because I spend too much time thinking of what would happen if people enjoyed my blog.
The fear of failure will make you want to quit too. Just ending it before it even started. But a fear of success will make you quit when you’re doing great.
When you feel confident about the stuff you’re working on, you’ll suddenly feel discomfort. Your mind will start to fill up with doubts and worries and you’ll start to listen to them when you should be covering your ears while screaming ‘I can’t hear you!’.
Your fear of success is fictional and usually irrational
Usually these fears have no foundation whatsoever. Of course you’ll think about things that are ‘real’, they could actually exist, but they’re not real right now and they might never be real.
Still, your brain does not care whether a fear is real or not, or whether it is rational. You’ll feel afraid either way.
And your brain likes to exaggerate.
Suddenly you find yourself wondering whether you’d need to get a lawyer just in case someone takes the advice posted in your blogs the wrong way. You start to think about all the things you would want to say when you give your first TED talk and if people would laugh at you while you are standing on that red dot.
Again, they are not completely fictional fears.
Your fears are based on something you have seen before or something you have heard about somewhere. But that does not necessarily make them rational.
Fictional fears have a way of infesting your brain, crawling into every nook and cranny until you forget that there was not really anything to be afraid of in the first place.
So if your thoughts get a little out of control, or maybe a lot, you might want to take a closer look to see if fear of success is hiding behind those unfounded doubts.
Squash that fear of success
Dealing with a fear of success isn’t that different from dealing with a fear of failure. It all comes down to the same thing: dealing with fear. If you want to read more about dealing with fear, you can get some more information on this topic right here (I wouldn’t be me if I hadn’t already written a whole blog post about the subject). And if you want to read more about accepting your mistake-making self, you can read about that here.
Because I get into the subject of fear on a deeper level in the other post, I won’t really get into it right here.
What I do want to emphasize, is the importance of making the distinction between the fear of failure and the fear of success. Because that distinction can help you deal with it faster.
If you are trying to fight a fear of failure because you believe that you fear failure most, you will try and kill your doubts. You will look for insecurities and build your self-esteem. But if fear of success is actually the root of your problem, then insecurity won’t be your biggest issue.
People with a fear of success know they can do whatever they’ve been wanting to do.
They don’t know if they will succeed but they don’t feel the ‘I’ll never be able to do it’-shame that their ‘fear-of-failure’-counterparts experience on a daily basis.
They know they can do it.
It is what comes after that scares them into a state of unproductivity.
And if you’re unaware of the kind of fear you should be fighting, then you might end up being very busy fighting a fear that doesn’t even exist.
But hey, at least you’re doing something, right…?
