061 – Fear of Success

[00:00:00] This could very well be the thing that's holding you back from getting where you want to get in life. What I discovered through my experience as a coach and in my personal life as well, Was one of the things I was feeling held back by was unconscious, but it was quite powerful as an anchor was that I was actually scared to play big and play on a bigger level.

And I thought I was scared of failing, and so I kept working on the different fears that I had associated with failure without actually spending the time to reflect on that. Maybe I was scared of actually getting there and actually achieving the goals that I was setting for myself and getting to this.

Higher level that I was working towards. I gotta tell you, I was humbled by it. It knocked me down onto my butt. I hadn't thought about the [00:01:00] fact that I might actually be scared to get where I'm trying to go. I thought I was just scared of not getting there. But in reality, I had this deeper fear that was anchored in like deeper levels of my unconscious mind that I didn't believe I could handle it if I got there and so I was scared of actually arriving at this higher level or playing big and putting my putting myself out there and exposing myself to the world in a greater capacity because I thought if I get there, I can't handle it.

I'm not gonna be able to deal with it. And then I'll end up having to deal with all of the negative consequences associated with getting there and not being able to deal with it. And so to avoid that pain, the easiest thing to do, Is not really put the work in to get there and so I find this is true for a lot of people in life so many people are saying they want something but then when we look at their actions [00:02:00] their actions suggest something different their actions say that they don't actually want it because none of the actions are aligned with the words that they're saying of this is where I want to get to and then when we look at what steps they're taking what plans they're putting in place and what strategies and tactics they're executing on we find that that just It doesn't materialize in their lives at all.

Their actions say, I'm comfy where I am. I don't want to go anywhere else. This is where I want to be and I don't really want to push too far beyond the boundaries. Because that's uncomfortable and it's unfamiliar. And so, by looking at this unconscious fear that I find a lot of people have it, I would say at least 90 percent of the people that I've worked with have this in some area of their life.

And by looking at this unconscious fear, drawing it out, asking where it comes from, why it's there, where the belief stems from, it starts to give us the tools [00:03:00] to work our way through it so we can start working towards the goals that we say we want, or, just be completely honest with ourselves. And admit that we don't actually want those goals and let it go and walk away.

But if you're trying to get somewhere and you're looking at all the evidence that says that you're not actually getting there because you're not doing the work to get you there, then we've got to ask the question, what's holding you back? And more often than not, I find it's a fear of actually playing big, feeling like you can't handle it.

So one of the questions you can ask yourself, and this is what I asked myself to work out, what was holding me back in relation to Getting to these high levels is why not me why can't I get there and just paying attention to the answers that were coming up to those questions or to that question why not me well because I can't handle it [00:04:00] because I don't feel prepared because I don't feel qualified because I don't feel like I'm going to be able to handle the criticism and the backlash or maybe there's something that's a little more insidious that you're wrestling with there's some sense of shame that you haven't let go of Which is what I've seen with a lot of high performers.

Some people end up having broken relationships on their way up, and sometimes they behave in ways that they're not necessarily proud of, or even go as far as feeling ashamed about, and they're worried that the person that they fractured the relationship with on their path is going to come out of the woodworks and shame them publicly and share all these experiences.

personal details about their life from earlier in their career or earlier in their journey, that's going to tarnish their relationship. And so they worry that if I actually put my neck out there, people are going to come after me, and then the public is going to find out details about me that I don't want them to know.[00:05:00]

And so they'd rather just stay private and not put themselves out there. Whatever it may be, you want to inspect, why not you? Why can't you get there? And listen to the stories, write them down if you need to, or type them out. Don't judge them, just let them come out and get as much context and as many of them as you can out in front of you in some way.

Either on paper or on a new doc. So you can see them, you read them, and as a result of reading them and expressing them in some way, you actually process these thoughts differently than if they're just bouncing around in the walls of your mind. Because you're reading them externally. They're processed as if somebody's saying them to you, externally to you, and so it actually gets processed by a different part of the brain, and you start to see it in a different light.

But this was one that I wrestled with. I felt like I couldn't handle it. I couldn't handle the criticisms, and I couldn't handle the pressure that came with it, because [00:06:00] for a really long time, I believed, I wasn't capable of dealing with a lot of the pressures that came with increasing responsibility. And what that story was based on was, years ago, when I got into this work, I was wrestling with a lot of anxiety and depression.

And I was having panic attacks. And I thought, if this is happening now, when my life is so small, and I'm wrestling with anxiety and panic attacks and feeling like I'm a ticking time bomb, there's no way I'm going to be able to handle increasing pressure. where there are more eyes on me and more people looking to me.

If I have a panic attack or an anxiety attack in any of those circumstances, the fall from that position will be much harder and much longer. And so I thought, There's no way this is painful enough as it is in the tiny existence that my life was. There's no way I want my life to be any bigger than that because I don't think I can handle it.

Which [00:07:00] was this really profound belief because I thought then I'm shaping my future. And I'm making decisions about my future around my anxiety. So it's almost as if I had personified my anxiety like it was a child that followed me around. And because of its existence in my life, I wasn't able to handle it.

To make any other decisions without factoring in this child of anxiety and it was holding, I felt like it was holding me back like it was this burden and that's when I started to realize, wait, I'm shaping all of my decisions around whether or not an anxious child is going to be in my life and I realized that I wanted to take that power back.

So I worked through as much of the anxiety and the panic and the depression that I was wrestling with. And that started to clear and I started to collect evidence that I'm fine without anxiety and it's not going to hit me at some point and I can [00:08:00] hold myself together and if anxiety does hit me at some point, I know how to deal with it and address it and do so without shame.

And so as I was able to dismantle that whole cloud that I was wrestling with. Then what that did was it helped calm down the anxiety and the concern that I'm not going to be able to handle it if I get to the place that I'm trying to get to. So in a lot of cases, the evidence that we collect that is influencing these stories as to why we can't get there or why it's not okay for us to play on a bigger level are stemmed in our past.

And it's based on biased information, lopsided and charged experiences. Where, like I was saying with my anxiety, I was basing this belief that I couldn't handle it off my experience with anxiety. But as I started to dismantle those perceptions and those beliefs, I was able to reconstruct a new foundation of beliefs that I can [00:09:00] handle it if it does happen.

And the other thing that was really important for me to realize was it wasn't going to happen overnight. It rarely does. As the saying goes, You can become an overnight success 10 years in the making. And so there was some thought in my mind that there would be this huge leap, a significant leap from where I was into the stratosphere.

But in reality, I hadn't seen any evidence of anybody doing that at any point. And what actually happens is it's this slow, steady staircase. If you're building your life out for yourself, it's a slow, steady staircase. And so that gives you an opportunity to acclimatise The thing about. Mountaineers, hiking, Everest, Kilimanjaro, any mountain really, they have to do it in stages to ensure that they acclimatise Because if they haven't developed the ability to navigate breathwork, which is really popular at the [00:10:00] moment, as they do their climb, it's important for them to adjust so their entire cardiovascular system can adjust to the differing pressures that come with different altitudes. And so that's true in our journey.

We can kind of take that metaphor and. Make it analogous to our experience in our careers and our professional lives that it's not going to happen overnight. So you get to take a few steps, acclimatize to it, get familiar with it, and then take a few steps, acclimatize to it. And you acclimatizing doesn't have to take very long at all.

And so you just keep moving little by little by little by little, and you'll find that you will face new challenges as you step up the staircase. Those are all challenges that you can handle as you go, and you'll learn new things about yourself. And with each step and each Incline that you experience that prepares you for the next step.

And so if you're dealing with [00:11:00] difficulties and challenges along the way, you're preparing yourself. It's like you're training yourself all along the way for the next step. And that's really important because when you realize that the progression happened steadily and that you can prepare yourself methodically as you go through it and work through the different layers of.

Insecurity and fear and concern that show up at each stage, then it calms down the anxiety of like, I'm not going to be able to handle the pressure of that level. You most certainly will be able to handle it because it requires you adjusting and digging deep on different levels as you get there. As long as you're methodical about it, there are people who are handed incredible opportunities and they turn to dust.

Because all of these unconscious fears don't ever get worked through and then they back out right at the last minute because they can't handle it. This happened to me in a previous life before I got into coaching and [00:12:00] building my coaching business. I was given an opportunity that I had worked really hard towards and then when they gave it to me, I panicked.

End Because all of the insecurities and all of the doubt kicked in and I thought, I can't handle this on my own. I can't do this. I wanted it, but I felt like I couldn't do it. And so I turned it down. I'm like, I can't do this. Um, I'm not available. I think was the excuse or something like that that I came up with.

And it was a fixed date. There was no flexibility with it. And I knew that, which is why I said, I'm not available then. And I can't change my plans. And that was my way of just backing out of it. Because, The fears and the doubts were so palpable and so convincing. That's I believe I would have crumbled under the pressure of it and so that can happen if you're not doing the work as you go and that's not what I was doing because I hadn't exposed myself to any of the work that now influences my work I had the emotional [00:13:00] intelligence of a spoon at the time so.

There wasn't, there wasn't much for me to work through as far as I was concerned. But then I remember coming away from that experience thinking, I don't want that to ever happen again. I don't want to be given an opportunity I'm working towards and that I've asked for, and then have so much doubt that I back out of it.

And so that was one of the catalysts that got me onto the journey of finding ways to work through these insecurities and these supposed weaknesses that I had. Because I didn't want them to continually affect me the way that it did in that moment. And it happened with somebody that I was looking up to, someone I considered a mentor at the time, which added an extra layer of, uh, humiliation and shame for me, because he was confused.

He's like, I thought you wanted this. I said, I do. I just, I I can't make it happen. And he knew it was an excuse, but he was graceful enough to not call me out on it [00:14:00] because he could see that I was wrestling with it on my own. So working through what the insecurities are at different stages, you don't have to do it all at once, but working through it as they come up can be the most effective way to help you step into the next opportunity that presents itself.

And that will help you slowly and methodically over the course of, let's say you do that just for five years. If you think about your life now, five years from now, we're towards the end of 2024, so if you're thinking of where you are five years from now in the end of 2029 or maybe let's call it 2030 just to round it off, what would your life look like?

What would you want it to look like? And is that somewhere you actually want to be? And are you willing to do the stair step approach of working through the insecurity when you see it come up? [00:15:00] And you go, okay, I can feel this insecurity, I can feel these fears coming up, time to go inward, work through it to the best of my ability, and then acclimatize to my new, uh, altitude.

And then once you've worked through that, you acclimatize to it. Then you work through the next layer because a new opportunity will present itself. And if you do that consistently over a five year period in the different areas of your life, this is not limited to your professional life. This can be in your romantic life, your personal life with your family.

It can be with friends. If you're struggling to build a network of friends, work through these different insecurities as you go, and you'll find that your life will become fuller in all areas. over the next five years. And you can just do that as an experiment. Start with one year, see how that goes.

Extend it out to five years. And I'm confident that you will, after a year of doing it, you will see evidence which will encourage you to do five years. And I'd be surprised if you stopped at the end of [00:16:00] five years. I know I will continue doing this throughout the rest of my life. I don't see an end to this because I know that I will want to continue to grow and evolve.

To help open me up to opportunities in life that hadn't I worked through those things, I wouldn't have had those opportunities. And that's been true for opportunities I've had up until this point in my life. I wouldn't have the opportunity to do what I'm currently doing, including podcasting, recording this video, if I had not worked through my insecurities previously.

Thinking that I couldn't handle putting myself, my thoughts, my beliefs out into the world. And the insights that I have to share. There were insecurities that were holding me back from doing that, so I worked through them, which opened up the gates for me to be able to step into this opportunity. So the same is going to be true moving forward, and the same is true for you.

So spend time reflecting on what is [00:17:00] holding you back. Do you think you can handle it? Do you think you can't? What is it that you feel like you can't handle? What is that based on? Because it's a belief that you've got. There's some evidence that you're looking at in your past saying that's why. Go back, look for opposing evidence at the time.

If you felt like you couldn't handle it, ask yourself, in what ways were you able to handle that? And the most obvious one is that it didn't crush you. And the reason I know that is because you're here right now, listening to this. And you can't be listening to this if it had crushed you, because you'd be ended, but you're not.

So, that in and of itself, while you may not have handled it the way you wanted to, the fact that you got through it says that you can handle it to some extent, otherwise it wouldn't have crushed you. And then start looking for other forms of evidence. Look for evidence in ways that You were able to find a way through it in ways that you didn't fully appreciate at the time.

For example, if you've read my book, you know [00:18:00] this story, but when I was in high school, I had been beaten up. And I then psychologically beat myself up for years afterwards, until I started doing this work, because I saw myself as weak for not fighting back. Because I knew other people in my life who, if they were in the same situation, They would have fought back, but I didn't do that.

I just took the beating from these guys that were beating me up. And I beat myself up for being weak in my mind about that. But then I realized when I reframed it, and I had this shift in perception, that being able to take the punches and the kicks and having everything kicked out of me and beaten out of me, was actually a reflection of the strength that I could actually endure that.

And that completely reframed my experience, and so I stopped judging myself as being weak. Granted, had I known how to, I would have fought back. But I [00:19:00] didn't know how to, and I also knew that the guys that were beating me up had significantly more power and strength than I did. They also had backup in case I was able to take them on.

And so there was something in the back of my mind that if I fought them I'd make it worse. And so the safest, and shortest experience of that beating would have been just to take it until they were done and then they'd leave. And that's what happened. And I was able to handle it. And so that informed my ability to handle circumstances moving forward.

I realized if I can handle that, I can handle a lot more in my life. Then what I'm giving myself credit for and that helped change my perception. So look for the evidence, the opposing evidence to the belief that you're carrying because your evidence that you're carrying now that's informing the belief is biased.

It's biased towards not believing in yourself, but look for the evidence that says, here's why you can and should believe in yourself.

So do this [00:20:00] reflection, listen back on this episode. If it helps you come back to this as much as you need to, because. I don't think this is a topic that is spoken about enough and it wasn't one that I reflected on enough until halfway through my career and then I realized just how much this was holding me back because I was looking at the evidence I was getting and the work that I was putting in and there was this dissonance between the two, there was a lack of congruency between the two and so I had to reflect on it and I realized I was scared of getting where I wanted to go and I want to leave you with this quote, it's a beautiful quote by Napoleon Hill and it says, Others will believe in you only when you believe in yourself.

They will tune in on your thoughts and feel toward you just as you feel towards yourself. So, the more you're able to develop belief in yourself by changing your perception of these past experiences, Others will believe in you more so, [00:21:00] not because you're arrogant about it, but just because you have this grounded, centered self belief, and that's usually when we start to attract in opportunities that would have been difficult to find otherwise.

Now, moving forward with how you develop the sense of confidence and self belief to be able to get where you want to go, to change the inner dialogue, the best thing you can do Is accumulate small amounts of evidence that you can do this and that's getting in the small reps. So, for example, if you haven't been training at the gym for a while, you haven't ever trained at all.

Instead of trying to lift the most amount that you can or push yourself the hardest that you can. The best thing you can do for at least six weeks is just give yourself the ability to get comfortable with doing the exercises. [00:22:00] Low weight, but just getting in the reps and getting used to the movement and getting comfortable with the familiarity of those particular movements to exercise and train those muscles.

And while it may not feel like you're burning muscle when you're experiencing an expansion in strength or muscle mass, you're developing confidence. Developing your ability to actually do the exercises themselves and have the appropriate form and posture throughout the entire exercise and each rep, so that when you do start to increase weight or increase the amount of reps that you're doing in each set, You have the confidence of the movement itself, so then you can just focus on doing the exercise with the added weight, without learning too many different things.

And so you're adding elements, syncretically, or additionally, and compounding it, as you develop your ability to do that. And so, when you're doing that in smaller steps, just like, as if you were to [00:23:00] save money, each hundred dollars that you save may not feel like a whole lot, or fifty dollars at a time, but it's An extra 50 sitting on the previous 50 that you had saved.

And all the other 50 notes that you had put in, for example. And so with the compound effect, and we see this if you study the compound effect, you can look this up. It builds up and it hits an inflection point. So the same is true for when you're trying to build the self belief and confidence that you can actually do something.

And you can handle something. Keep doing the small things that help you feel like you're ready for when the big things come into play, because you had gotten so many reps in over time that when something big comes in, you can then look back at all the evidence you've got of being able to do A significant amount of small things that's helped you develop a lot of confidence so that when you are dealing with a big opportunity, you feel fine about it.

In fact, I'll share this story that I learned from [00:24:00] watching a documentary on Ed Sheeran. He's a global phenomenon, an incredible songwriter and singer, and he was sharing, and I'm paraphrasing this. So take this. With a grain of salt and me not being Ed's biggest fan, but I really appreciate his music and his work.

And so what he shared was he did a lot of pubs where there were only two, three, 10, 15 people at a time, and he was singing live with his acoustic guitar and it required improvising a lot of the time or dealing with hecklers or dealing with people that were drunk and or dealing with an audience that were.

socializing louder than he was playing. And for a lot of people, they'd feel like that would put a dent in their confidence, but he saw that as opportunities to get the reps in. So then when he got the opportunity that he was eventually seeking, which is now playing in stadiums around the world, that he can do that with confidence [00:25:00] because he had so many reps of doing the exact same thing, but for smaller audiences.

In more challenging environments. He even admitted that he feels like stadiums are easier to navigate and he plays live with a little, uh, with a loop. Board that with pedals on it, where he loops his guitar and his singing and throughout it, which is what he was doing in his little shows and pubs and busking and stuff like that.

And so he got all the confidence there. So if there's anything that goes weird on stage in a stadium. He's fine about it because he got so many reps in, in other different environments that helped train him and develop this self belief that he needed. So people look at him going like, aren't you worried about it?

He's like, no, this, this stuff is easy compared to the other stuff I had to deal with. And so you want to be able to get those reps in, in the smallest of ways. If you're doing auditions, don't worry about trying to get the best audition for the best role. Just get as [00:26:00] many auditions as you possibly can.

Your first audition is gonna be the suckiest one you ever do, and then each one is going to get just a little bit better. As James clears as 1% better, makes a significant difference if you keep doing that and keep improving by 1%. The same is true if you're trying to get to a savings goal. You save a little bit at a time and a little bit at a time, and you slowly increase how much you are saving.

And while it feels like nothing's happening for a long time with a compound effect eventually. The expansion, the inflection point kicks in and that's when things really start to take off. The same is true if you're trying to look for a job. You've got to put in a lot of applications to eventually find the job that you want to work in.

In fact, you probably have to work at three or four different companies before you land at the company that you genuinely want to work in. If you're somebody in sales or you're an entrepreneur, it's probably going to take a lot of attempts at selling somebody [00:27:00] or enrolling somebody before you feel like you get your process.

Lockdown, you develop the confidence that you can actually do this. That was true for me early in my career. I had no sales experience, but I had to try and I kept failing and fumbling my way through it until I developed the ability, little by little, that maybe I can actually do this. So, you want to stack in all the small amounts because it all adds up.

And then, as that adds up, bigger and bigger opportunities will present themselves. And you will be ready for them, because if we were to kind of timeline this out, this timeline is really long if you're getting lots of reps in, and the opportunities might happen all the way down here. And so it feels like this opportunity all the way over here is much bigger than any opportunity you've had in the past.

But if we were to lie that opportunity down on its side, and compare it to how much time you've spent, you've got significantly more time spent doing it. than this one [00:28:00] opportunity, the size of this one opportunity coming in. In fact, all of those reps that you were getting in was preparing you for that.

So remember that it makes a significant difference. So with that being said, I hope you got value from this episode. Please make sure you leave a review. Every review counts. Helps get the podcast out there. Helps get this information out to people. You never know who you're helping just by leaving a review.

Thank you for being here. I'm Georgio Gennis. We'll see you next time.