The fear of success

Some people often have songs stuck in their head and those songs and melodies are like the soundtrack to their current life. I have to admit that 'some people' is totally inaccurate. It's probably 'all people', but then I'll have to cut the 'often'. Nevermind, what I wanted to say is that I (and there I really can't say how widespread this phenomenon is) almost equally often have sentences stuck in my head. Quotes I recently read or phrases I made up that cannot leave until I've written them down.

One of my most haunting phrases recently is the famous beginning of a quote by Marianne Williamson:

Our deepest fear is not that we're inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we're powerful beyond measure.

It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.

Naturally, I have to think a lot about this quote. Not because I struggle with understanding its meaning, but because I know exactly what it means to be scared of ones own light.

I remember that almost a year ago I caught myself thinking about not making this one phone call that would be really important for my project, because 'It could work. I could succeed.' Now, when I'm reading this line it sounds foolish to me.  I? Don't dare? Because it could've worked? Why on earth would I have thought this? If at least I'd have been afraid to do it because I was afraid to fail!

And, here it is. My potentially great performance scared me such that I couldn't do it.
Thinking I could fail and therefore not doing it is a common, accepted thing. But thinking it could work and being afraid of the success is something we're not so comfortable with. (Funny thing, I don't remember if I called after all.)

Why was I afraid?

Before I started the project I heard lots of successful stories that had happened in other countries and I always thought how great this would be in our country. So I initiated it and from the beginning, whatever I did, did actually work. Even though it often worked in its own weird ways I didn't always anticipate :-)

Honestly, I never truly believed in myself and my abilities to be that successful, so of course our first successes and the first people willing to join in and supporting me really surpriscared me. It left me paralyzed at a time when I should have been rocking it. I kept the wheel going, no question, but I did it below my true potential. I never had to admit it, because 1) I had results (as did the whole team) 2) it exhausted me (as a proof of truly working hard on it).

That we didn't reach our goals didn't matter, it appeared very successful to everyone who knew about it. But I wasn't satisfied. I never wasted much thought on it, but it dawns on me that deep inside I knew this was far from my best performance, I couldn't make it up to myself and I couldn't start this project all over again.

My point is: I figured out that I had been afraid of my own light.

If you read this now and think you don't know how it feels, you've probably turned 'I'm afraid of shining and living up to my potential by using my true talents of which I have so many' into a simple 'I cannot do it' - this sounds like a fact and feels pretty comfortable, doesn't it?

By now, one of my mottoes is to consciously look for things that scare me and launch right into them. This makes me eager to experience even more uncomfortable situations, confront myself with upsetting thoughts and it makes the overwhelming possibility of success far less frightening.


What did I do today that scares me?

- Start writing a blog. Not because I fear overwhelming success ;-) but because putting my work out there non-anonymously without receiving feedback is completely new to me and something I thought I'll always get around.