Why You FEAR Success (Part 3)

Part 1: https://www.patreon.com/posts/why-you-fear-1-99709103

Part 2: https://www.patreon.com/posts/99785606

We all have our own definition of what success looks like with money, career, health life and relationships.

But generally speaking, success can be defined as:

Success = Achieving significantly MORE than what you’ve done until this point today.

Success = You significantly outperforming your current self.

1. Raised Expectations

When you become successful (Doing significantly better than YOUR current self)

Both you and others around you will begin to expect that you will REMAIN successful and continue to build on that success.

People will expect upward movement from you because they have seen upwards movement from you already. People tend to expect you to keep doing the same things you’ve done before.

Knowing a lot of people are expecting you to continue being successful can put a lot of pressure on you.

This pressure can cause some people to rise to the occasion or crumble under what they perceive to be high pressure.

Some people find it harder to perform when a bunch of people are watching them than when hardly anyone is paying attention to what they are doing.

Your success will become sooooo normal that people won’t appreciate it as much anymore. 

It becomes normalised because of how used to it they are.

They feel entitled to expecting that same level of performance from you.

If we consider athletes such as Cristiano Ronaldo, Messi, Lebron James, Tom Brady.

They have such a great level of performance that people expect them to perform that way every single week. 

Even if they have 1 'bad' week where they may have underperformed compared to their regular performance, the world gets worried and starts wondering if it’s time for them to retire, just because they had ONE underperforming week.

(Which may have not been an actual bad performance for the average athlete, but its perceived to be bad when compared to how they are every week)

Them having a great game is nothing for the fans to be excited about anymore, it’s more of an expectation. Them NOT having a great game is the surprise.

For most people in their line of work, having a great week or performance gets the people going and excited because their great performances are so far and few between.

Whereas the ‘superstar’ level people in ANY line of work or academics, having a great performance is so NORMAL that no-one is excited anymore and they can take it for granted.

This can become a mental challenge for people who are high performers because they have to find ways to stay mentally locked in and continue performing at higher levels even though everyone has normalised their great performance and no-one will be excited when they do it but they still have to keep performing at a high level anyway.

This is not as easy as it sounds.

Its different when you are the one everyone looks to:

• To solve everyone problem
• Close every deal
• Do what no-one else has been able to do

It’s much easier to be a random ‘member of the team’ than it is to be the star player because no-one expects anything from you.

Most people are average, not because they can’t get success. It’s because they don’t want to deal with responsibilities and expectations that come with being a known and successful individual.

They want success. But not the responsibilities and expectations that come WITH success.

They want to do great things, but they don’t want people to expect and rely on them for great things all the time.

It’s a whole different game when people expect you to do great things ON REQUEST, versus when you occasionally do great things.

“Most people don’t want to take the last game winning shot because if they score the last game winning shot of the game, the team will now rely on them to always take the last game winning shot”

- Tim Grover (Trainer for Michael Jordan & Kobe Bryan)

2. Less Support (But This Can Go Both Ways)

The more successful you become, the support level can go down.

On one hand, when you create more success for yourself, more people may want to be part of the journey even though they was nowhere to be seen before when you really needed the support.

It’s a paradox, the more successful you become, the less help you need, but this makes more people to want to help you.

“The rich get richer”

Success can bring you more help and support than you need or want.

On the other hand, fewer people will want to be around you simply because your success can be a reflection of what they lack.

You could still have support but it may be fewer in numbers than when you were a less successful individual.

When you create a certain level of success, you can help yourself even when others are not willing to help you so having less support might not even matter that much anymore.

But you’ll have to come to acceptance of this.

The more successful you become:

Some people may not want to hang around or help you as much anymore and this is OK because with the success that you’ve created, not only have you shown yourself you have the ability to do it, you now have the resources to do it on your own.

Success gives you the confidence and mental toughness to understand that you’re gonna do what you’re gonna do whether people are around or not

Success makes you a much more empowered individual.

3. Burnout

You can become extremely tired and exhausted from creating and maintaining success.

“I don’t want to be successful because then I have to do so much work and all these expectations and responsibilities I can’t deal with”

- Most people

The fear of burning out stops people.

They haven’t even taken the first step of success but they are worried about what's going to happen and how daunting things will be when they get there.

Many people do this as a way to rationalise their inaction of the moment.

Telling yourself all the negative things that ‘could’ happen before you’ve even taken then first step of making ANYTHING happen, stops you from taking action because you’ve thought yourself into how bad and scary things could be in the future. Even though nothing has even happened yet.

Don’t think about scary of hard the success will be. Focus on getting to the success FIRST and then worry about all the things you’re imagining when (or if) they arise.

Handle your problems as they come.

Don’t start worrying about problems you don’t have or problems that are based on actions you haven’t even taken yet.

It’s a waste of energy, time and you’re talking yourself out of the success you haven’t even gotten yet.

- Till next time