Fear of Financial Success

Posted On: 2006-03-29Length: 15:33

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Hi, this is Joan and this is episode 37 of The Prosperity Show. Thanks for tuning in. Today we're going to talk about fear of success and how it may be keeping you from reaching your financial goals. But first, let me tell you about prosperityplace.com, our main site, where you kind find lots of information about improving your relationship with money and yourself. Also, I'd like to let you know that on Memorial Day weekend, in case you're looking for some place to go, which would be May 27th, on a Saturday. We're going to be doing a seminar called "Is your Inner Child Keeping you Broke?" here in Santa Fe. Santa Fe's a great place to visit. And it's going to be a very fun seminar, but profound at the same time. You can learn more about that at innerchildseminars.com. I'll have a link to that on the show notes at The Prosperity Show. If you want to get in touch with me, just write to joan@theprosperityshow.com

So let's talk about fear of success and how it may be holding you back. It seems odd at first that people should be afraid of success, because after all that's what they're aiming for. But it's rather a common problem. And I'll look at the elements of it that are part of the identity factor a little later. But first, let's take a look at some of the elements of fear of success that are commonly expressed by people. First of all, people are afraid to become successful because they're afraid that if they do they won't be able to sustain the success. Ok, I got here once, I don't know that I can keep it up. So rather than face the fear of lessening my position, in other words, rather than facing the fear that once I'm successful I won't be successful anymore, I'm just not going to get there in the first place, because I don't know that I can do it more than once. And this ties in with the fear of losing what you have. It's almost like the game that they talk about in transactional analysis called "Love me, Love me, Leave me Alone." Where people will push the other person away before the other person breaks up with them so that they don't have to face that particular kind of interaction. And it's the same thing with money. Maybe I won't get wealthy, or I won't make more money, because once I have it I may lose it, and I don't want to have to deal with losing what I have. Although this might not always seem logical, because once you have it you have the ability to actually do it again. This fear is very common and often keeps people from moving forward. Another fear is the fear of the responsibility that success demands. Once you reach a point of success, and let's say that you build a successful business. Well the business doesn't keep going by itself, you're the one that has to keep it going. And that's a big responsibility. So rather than face that responsibility, many people will just not get to be successful. And another common fear is...