How to Stop Being Afraid of Success

Most of us are familiar with the fear of failure. What if I don’t do what others expect of me? What if I make a terrible mistake or I’m not able to do my job effectively? Will I really be able to balance both a career and a personal life?

Those are all real fears. But I also find that in the workplace, many people suffer just as much from a fear of success.

Success brings a different set of life experiences and challenges. What happens if I’m really successful? How will my life change? Will I be expected to deliver even more and more—until I finally fall flat on my face and fail?

Many of us also face something called the “Imposter Syndrome.”  We go about our lives each day, doing perfectly fine, but deep inside we don’t feel qualified for the position we hold or the compensation we receive. Inside, we’re afraid that we’re just not as good as we pretend to be. Eventually, we’ll be exposed as imposters.

I’m surprised by how many very successful men and women tell me they feel like imposters. This includes executives and leaders and people who are highly respected in their fields. These are people we would turn to as role models.

Unless you’ve faked your credentials or you’re lying about your qualifications, in most cases this is a simple self-esteem issue. We’ve been conditioned to believe we can only achieve so much. When we go beyond that, we start to question if we really deserve what we get.

My mentor, Alan Weiss, says that your first sale is always to yourself. That’s true whether you are an actual salesperson, or you’re selling an idea or a project to your colleagues and peers. If you don’t believe in yourself, how will others believe in you?

One way to overcome the fear of success is to envision exactly what success looks like. If you get the big promotion you’ve been working towards, how will life change? You may have a bigger salary, a better title, a nicer office, more interesting projects. But you might also need to work longer hours, attend more meetings, or give up some of the tasks you enjoy doing now. If you’ll be promoted from within, you’ll have a different set of peers. Maybe you’ll even have to manage some of your former colleagues. How will that feel?

Fear of success is just as real as fear of failure. And, like many other fears, it will lose much of its scariness if you can bring it out from the shadows and look at what’s bothering you in the light of day.

-Linda Popky, President, Leverage2Market Associates