Improve Your Mind

By Melani Ward

Fear of success - isn’t that simply one of the most curious of emotions we have?

When I hear it I think about some equally perplexing fears such as the fear of being beautiful, the fear of being loved, the fear of being too smart or the fear of having your life exactly how you want it.

Now those may sound like crazy fears to you but the truth is that people live with those fears deep in their hearts every single day.

So, why do we have these fears?

In short, fears are there to protect us. They are there to warn us of danger and to prepare us for something scary or dangerous that is about to happen. In the case of the fear of success, the fear tends to originate in that place that knows something may suffer if you really achieve the success you think you want.

For example, I was working with a client who radiated this fear but she could never understand why. She said that she really wanted to break out and become a nationally recognized speaker in her industry and charge $10,000 a day to speak. She also wanted to increase her client base from 5-15 so that she could spend more time helping people who needed her one-on-one.

She said she wanted it so badly (and nobody could have convinced her otherwise) but she continued to make choices to sabotage her success. However, when we drilled down to what was really going on and I asked her what she would have to give up to achieve that success or what would suffer she realized that getting top billing would require a lot more work (she was comfortable with the level of effort she was putting in already), a lot more travel (more time away from her family), jealousy and disconnection from her friends (reaching her financial goals would put her in a very different place than her friends and she feared losing them) and learning a new way of marketing and getting in front of people (which would require her to stretch and be uncomfortable).

The fear and the sabotaging behaviors were protecting her from those experiences without her even being aware of it.

So, what’s the answer when fear is staring you in the face and keeping you from acting?

One of the exercises I do with clients involves creating a vision of how they would really like it to be. In this case my client created a vision for the future that involved her reaching her big goal. She got very clear on what she wanted, how she wanted it to be and how she would feel when she attained it. When she started holding back I asked her this simple question: what is the worst that can happen if this dream comes true for you? By living in the moment and feeling what it would be like to have actually accomplished the goal, she was able to see that not only was the worst case scenario not likely but that even if it did happen, she had complete control over what she did about it.

For example, since one of her concerns was that she would spend a lot more time away from her family I asked her what was the worst that could happen if she found that to be true if she wanted to achieve that goal. She very matter of factly said she would stop traveling so much and re-adjust her goal so it was more in line with her priority of spending more time with her family.

The bottom line is that it is often the case that the unknown paralyzes us. So, doing a visioning exercise that actually puts you in the moment and allows you to see, hear, smell and touch the future will allow you to see that what you’ve created in your mind is not reality and even if it were, you have the power to change the result. It’s simply never as bad as we think it’s going to be.

Success coach Melani Ward helps women entrepreneurs create the business of their dreams so they can create more money, time and freedom in their lives. If you’re ready to get more clients, have more fun and make a whole lot more money in your small business, get your FREE report NOW at http://www.HotButtonCopy.com

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Tags: overcoming fear, success