Last week I wrote about the fear of failure ingrained from us in an early age with the myth of Icarus flying too high and failing (quite spectacularly). Today, I’d like to address the flip side of that fear of failure: the fear of success.
While many of us understand and can therefore confront our fear of failure, understanding and confronting a fear of success is a much more difficult task. After all, we think to ourselves, why would anyone be afraid of being successful? It feels so silly that we feel like we can’t talk about it.
However, there’s something very real and very harmful in being afraid of success. If you’re afraid of succeeding in your endeavors, then why would you ever really work toward success? It’s easy to sabotage oneself when we are just on the brink of success and sometimes our fear of being successful can actually outweigh our fear of failure. We may unconsciously choose failure.
Have you ever realized that you’ve sabotaged yourself out of a fear of success?
