The Emotion Machine

We commonly hear about the fear of failure, but could there also be a fear of success?

Most of us say we want success, but when we actually think about success it can have some major consequences that many of us aren’t willing to face.

Often instead of reaching our full potential as individuals, we sell ourselves short and settle for less, because we don’t feel we’re truly ready to handle the success we’re actually capable of.

The humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow wrote a lot about the concept of self-actualization – recognizing our full potential as individuals – and he shared compelling reasons many of us try to avoid this greatness in our lives.

This article will describe 4 key reasons why people tend to fear success. Simply becoming more aware of these reasons is a great starting point in accepting this fear and working to overcome it.

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I remember as a young teen when I first heard the words, “Think for yourself and question authority.” It was a soundbite of Timothy Leary being sampled in the Tool song Third Eye – I was probably 13 or 14 at the time.

The swirling guitars and synthesized chaos of the song along with the inspiring words created an atmosphere that was probably as close to an “insightful” or “psychedelic” experience as anything else I had experienced up until that age. It felt meaningful and liberating.

And even today these words carry a lot of meaning to me. The mantra “think for yourself and question authority” speaks to a simple truth, which is: society isn’t always right, and you have to trust your own heart and mind at the end of the day, no matter what anyone else thinks.

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I think everyone wants to be happy, some people are just really, really misguided about it.

According to recent research in psychology, being too nice can sometimes backfire on us.

People who compulsively say “yes” to everyone’s wants and needs often experience greater levels of stress and emotional burnout; they spend all their energy trying to make others happy, and they forget to take care of their own wants and needs.

Kindness is often seen as a sign of moral virtue in society, and in many ways it is, but those who are “too nice” often have their kindness rooted in an unhealthy desire to be accepted and liked by others, and not necessarily out of the goodness of their heart.

They do nice things for others not because they genuinely want to, but because they feel that is what is expected of them or they are desperate for positive attention.

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If we all take the smallest step in the right direction, we’d make a big difference.

Lead by example, not force.

It takes years of conscious practice to undo all the negative conditioning we’ve been exposed to through our teachers, parents, family, friends, peers, and society as a whole. Of course, this doesn’t mean we never learn anything positive from these figures - we do - but we also learn a lot of unhelpful things that we need to unlearn.