what's up peeps so today I want to do a little quick one on something that it's commonly called
the fear of success what I want to talk about specifically has how often clients I work with
believe that they're afraid of failure and yet the evidence doesn't make sense and it turns
out they're actually afraid of success so before I go into how that is it's really important to
define what failure and in success are because they're simply different labels that we give to
outcomes of our behavior and our efforts now often people talk about failure is something
going wrong and therefore having bad attached to it pain suffering so on and success there's
something going well and having lots of pleasure and an increased quality of life attached to it
this story's not quite accurate because there's another way to look at failure and success that
allows us to make a lot more sense out of the fear of success and the self-sabotage that leads
to consistent failure what if we define failure as things staying the same so failures you you
attempt to bring something new into your life and that attempt does not change your life and so you
stay the same so if I go to the gym and I lift the same amount of weight as last time I don't
achieve a higher level of weight that's a failure I'm staying the same I'm lifting the same amount
if I see somebody at a party that I'm attracted to and I don't go and talk to them there's no
a new board into my life my life stays the same socially that's a failure in staying the same if
I don't start a business and keep working my job even though I want to start a business then that's
a failure I'm staying at my job I'm staying the same so you can see that failure is merely never
making an attempt that's strong enough to actually changelings okay well that's one definition of
failure which brings us a definition of success I want you only go for a second of the idea that
success is pleasurable because we can clearly see in the definition of failure that failure
can be quite pleasurable at least in the moment I might be nervous about going to talk to their
person at the party and so when I tell myself I don't have to talk to them I get a relief that's
actually quite a pleasurable sensation now my life won't change it will stay comfortable in a sense
so there's no real pain in the moment now later on with nothing great is happening in my social life
then I'll feel the pain but right now as I relieve myself from that effort of going too much further
than usual I feel pleasure we're a success if I was to go and talk to that person and it went well
that's not necessarily going to be a pleasurable experience for me now in the long term it will
be I'll be proud of myself options will have opened up in my life oh I'll be wiser and more
experienced and have greater quality but right now it might be quite painful to do that for example
if someone who's never been in a relationship before when they first actually get into a
relationship there's a lot of pain and suffering you get all people-pleasing as you try to manage
how the person heaps of jealousy issues come up for the first time in your life you have to figure
out sexuality a long term sex life with somebody deeper conversations uncomfortable conversations
changing your lifestyle fit someone and there's a lot of pain in the success of getting into a
relationship there's a lot of pain in the changes so when we say that somebody's afraid of success
what we're really saying is they're afraid of significant change at least in a certain area
of their life and it's not correct to say they're afraid of failure because everything they do is a
form of failure it's keeping things the same it's entropy nothing is improving that thing
is changing so a lot of people say they're afraid of failure but if you look at their
life they're constantly failing to change failing to improve they look at their life and they say
it's comfortable therefore I'm successful in yet by the definition of failure being keeping things
the same there is no success if they've stayed at the same dead-end job for 10 years they're good at
the job they say I'm good at it and they call that a success but the fact that they hate it
and they're not taking any risks to change it is in fact a failure they're keeping things the same
so when your brain tells you that you're afraid of failure I'm afraid of rejection you know I'm
afraid of looking stupid in front of people I'm afraid of running out of money you'll find that
often the behavior that you're doing right now actually makes all those things you're afraid I've
come true if I don't go and talk to the person in that party I've rejected myself so rejections
already occurred it's as if they've rejected me it's if I haven't even given them a chance so
rejection is guaranteed you know if I if I if I don't try and start my business my finances might
be safe and stable but I won't feel financially secure I won't feel like I'm in control of my
finances so I'm actually bringing that insecurity to life so the idea that you're afraid of failure
is often contradicted by your behavior you embrace failure you're making it happen all the time by
not changing things I want to emphasize that it is much more likely that you're afraid of
success because success means significant painful change you know a lot of people think I'd love to
become rich and famous but they never do anything towards that because deep down they know that that
change of lifestyle would be horrific to them they're so not prepared for it you can see this
when people accidentally succeed like winning the lottery somebody suddenly gets millions of
dollars the research clearly shows that they will absolutely ruin themselves with that when not only
will they lose all the money they often end up in a worse financial situation at the end of it all
they end up in debt despite winning millions of dollars because they weren't ready for that change
was thrust upon them the only reason I'm doing this video is just to highlight that you lie to
yourself when you say you're afraid of failure if you're keeping things the same if you're keeping
things the same then you are all good with failure you will you live in the dream failure wise you're
somebody who exposes themselves to failure every day by not going for things because the end result
is the same as if you went for it and failed you fail by default which also brings up the
the reason it's okay to be scared of success is because the success does not automatically equal
pleasure certainly not in the short term real success is confusing you're going back to beginner
level at whatever you're doing you're gonna have to rewire all the map of your neural activity in
your brain to suit this new lifestyle that you will have created with your success I mean when
I started my business my whole world changed eating socializing spending money figuring what
to do with my day self-discipline getting out of bed in the morning all of those things had to be
rewritten by me starting a business it wasn't just an instant oh yeah now I'm free I can do
what I want and anything it was kind of worse than what I had before initially then as I stuck with
it the pleasure came the freedom as I adjusted to the lifestyle the new map was written so I don't
have a particular purpose for making this video other than to snap you out of the illusion that
you're afraid of failure and rejection you're not because you're doing those things to yourself all
the time nobody is afraid of it would do it all the time if you really were afraid of failure
you'd be succeeding like crazy you'd be doing anything to improve your life at every second no
you're afraid of change and mint okay but call it what it is and so next time when you think oh no
I'm afraid of failure grab yourself free right now I'm choosing failure because that takes you what
I'm comfortable with I'm afraid of having a better life I'm avoiding a better life right now because
it hurts to transition into a better life I hope that helps you write below comments or email me
down at Broderick codons in with your thoughts about the fear of success and the self-sabotage
that comes from there subscribe to the YouTube channel and I'll catch you all next time