How to Conquer the Fear of Success
From the desk of Victor Pride
Subj: Not giving up when you start getting somewhere
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I get asked the same question constantly.
“Victor, please help! I don’t want to do A, I want to do B. But my family wants me to do A. What should I do?“.
You should stop being a cowardly Lion, that’s what you should do.
If you know what you want to do, what you need to do, but you run away from it you are a coward and a quitter.
“But but but but but but but but but but but….”
But shut up.
If I wanted to hear about ifs and buts and candies and nuts I would have started Timid & Unsure – The Website for Mediocres.
But I didn’t, I started Bold & Determined – The Website for Winners.
So do one very important thing, pretty please for me, let the winner out. Stop resisting. If it’s your fate to be great then do it.
Your friends and family will either support you or they won’t. The ones who resist you (the majority) are saboteurs out to stop you from real success. If you can do it and they can’t, well, that’s a real nasty thought for them to think about.
So how do you convince your friends and family that you will succeed and be a big success and that they should believe in you?
You don’t convince them of anything. You should never conspire with saboteurs and you should never seek approval from people who are irrelevant to your success.
Your friends and family aren’t on the same wavelength as you and they are not the real enemy to success. It is not them that need to be convinced.
It is you who needs to convince yourself.
An unbreakable resolve and an iron will is worth more than 10,000 well-wishers. Support is irrelevant if you don’t even believe in yourself beyond reason.
Do you know what it’s called to resist your calling in life? It’s called self-sabotage. When you resist you are sabotaging yourself. You’re a damn traitor to yourself.
Your punishment as a traitor is more severe than Judas’ or Brutus’. Your punishment, as a traitor to yourself, is to live your whole life doing a job you hate and asking yourself the same question, teary eyed at night when no one else can see, “what if?“.
Oh, if only you had done as you were supposed to. If only you hadn’t ran from your destiny like Jonah. If only you weren’t a self-saboteur who conspired with other saboteurs against yourself.
“If only, if only, if only, boo-hoo“.
Good news, no matter how old you are and no matter how many times you have turned your back on success it is not too late. When you make the change you will only have one regret: “I should have done this sooner. My god, why did I wait so long?“.
After you’re done feeling sorry for yourself, you can pick yourself up, dust yourself off and say these words: I can do it, I will do it and no one will stop me.
Instead of being a self-saboteur, become self-sufficient. Unbreakable in your resolve.
It’s OK to be scared, everyone is scared, even I’m scared every time I hit publish. I’m not afraid 10 people will read, I’m afraid a million people will read.
The more successful you are the stronger the fear becomes. People will sabotage themselves so they don’t have to feel the fear anymore. Fear stops cowards and fear powers winners
When you’re successful everything is on the line, all eyes are on you and they’re all praying for you to fail. It’s easy to give them what they want, another failure. When you’re a failure nothing is on the line and there is no more pressure.
It’s not the absence of fear that makes you great. It’s action in the face of that fear that makes you great.
No one is really afraid of failing. Failing is easy and everybody does it. Nobody will hate you for failing. They will hate you for succeeding where they have failed.
Nobody wants to be hated, nobody wants to work hard, nobody wants to think they are better than others, nobody wants to make a big change, nobody wants mounting pressures.
It’s easier to just stay small. It’s easier to procrastinate and pretend you are going to do something big “later“. It’s easier to just be regular and fit in with regular Joe and Joanna.
It’s easier, when you’re on the cusp of success, staring it down, to just turn your back and walk away.
When you fail you get to stay the same, no change required, and staying the same is easy.
“The higher you climb the harder you fall. It’s lonely at the top. You don’t deserve success when other people are starving.”
On and on the excuses. Hey, if that’s the way you feel you can just stay the same. It’s a guarantee that no one will despise you for not succeeding and not everybody was meant for more.
But…
If you’re better than that you have to fight through that feeling of fear. Stop the procrastination and excuses for 30 days. Then extend it 30 more days. And 30 more. And on and on and on and on and on…
…and on and on and on…..
And just don’t damn stop. All the way from A to Z.
Until next time.
Your man,
-Victor Pride
PS – If you enjoyed this post be sure to check out the Rock ‘n Roll version.