The Fear of Success and It’s Role In Your Self-Sabotage

In today’s episode, we are going to be discussing a topic that people don’t really talk about much in this industry and that is the fear of success and how it can be detrimental to your end goals as a trader.  Take a moment to reflect on this question:  “Do you fear your own success?”  You might be resistant to this idea at first because after all, why would you fear getting everything that you want? Sounds crazy, right?  But you might be surprised to find out that the fear of success is actually responsible for a lot of the self-sabotage that occurs in our pursuit of what we think we want.  Fear of success is easily confused with fear of failure as both can keep you from reaching your full potential; however, the main difference between the two is that the fear of failure has more to with beating yourself up for underperforming, whereas fear of success is more built in the anticipation of how others will react to your accomplishments.  It’s one of the hardest things to pin down so our goal today is to identify why it happens, how you can overcome it as a trader and how you can become more self-aware so that you can go about dealing with this effectively.  Why would you be fearful of achieving the things that you are working so hard for?  Definition: Fear of success usually doesn’t mean a literal fear of success. People fear the results and consequences of making lots of money, for example, not the money itself. On a conscious level, you don’t actually fear achieving success but at the subconscious level, you might be holding on to a script or limiting belief that is at play which you have to face and challenge.  The subconscious mind works to prevent that which it fears: If you have an unresolved and unreasonable fear of success Your subconscious mind will continue making what your logical mind believes to be mistaken, but the subconscious always overpowers logic and wins. 0.004% vs 96.996%. If you haven’t programmed your mind to succeed, then you have programmed it to fail, and it’s carrying out your orders without your conscious awareness!  (Train tracks example). So why do we fear success? Fear of success is something usually learned in the early years of our lives. It is linked to the beliefs and values that we pick up from parents and others and store at a subconscious level Our parents and friends coach us to avoid looking like losers, to do our best and to always be a winner.  These appear as stories that we tell ourselves at a logical level but when you peel back the curtains there is a deeper underlying belief at play  It is often linked to a low level of self-worth The fear of success can show up in your logical thoughts in the form of the following thoughts: Success will ruin your relationships with friends and family  People will think you are always showing off or bragging Success might not be all it's cracked up to be  You fear the added responsibility that success entails  You fear the changes that success will bring into your life What if I become somebody that I don’t like  When you take a deeper look, these thoughts can be linked to values and beliefs that you picked up in your early childhood years:  “Successful people are bad, evil, etc” “Successful and rich people are lucky, inherited” “You have to work hard to earn a mere living” “It’s lonely at the top” “I am not worthy of success” These kinds of beliefs can really hurt you in the pursuit of your goals because despite your best intentions on a conscious level, at the subconscious level, you do not really want to become that bad or evil person or become socially isolated, so in order to maintain your current status quo, you will self-sabotage your results. Now the reason that you self-sabotage is because your brain is a fan of certainty and changes represent the “unknown” and potential danger to you.  For example, if you believe that achieving t