The Side-Effects of Success
Do you fear success?
Or its sideeffects?
- We don’t fear success
- Success feels satisfying
- We fear the sideeffects of success
When we set a goal and achieve it we meet our needs for growth, learning and accomplishment.
When we meet our needs we get good feelings.
We fear success because whilst some of our needs may be met other needs may not.
Take the example of posting daily for 30 days on LinkedIn.
If you manage to achieve that goal you’ll feel satisfied and proud.
But for some reason you’re still scared to start.
Why?
- To post daily means being consistent
- To post daily takes discipline
- Consistency and discipline don’t meet your needs for freedom and ease
If you don’t meet your needs for freedom and ease you’ll start to feel overwhelmed and tired.
These aren’t good feelings.
- To post daily means showing up in public
- You run the risk of rejection and criticism
- Your needs for safety and acceptance won’t be met
You now feel scared and vulnerable.
When our needs aren’t meant we get bad feelings.
We therefore hesitate, procrastinate and ultimately berate ourselves for not taking action.
This is Buddhist “the second arrow” - check out my conversation with Jerry Colonna to learn more (link in the comments).
How do we overcome these fears?
- Celebrate serendipity
- Rely on your resilience
- Accept your feelings
How certain can you be that the bad things will happen?
Only as certain as good things will happen.
The joy of uncertainty is that we can never know what might be round the corner and what serendipity may bring.
We may gain more than we expect.
When it comes to resilience it’s about learning to trust in yourself.
To trust that you will overcome any challenges.
There maybe unpleasant consequences but you’ll deal with them as they arise.
And it’s accepting these unpleasant feelings which is most important.
We can’t help but feel fear.
But we don’t have to push it away.
We can accept it and work with it and through it (see the link in the comments to my conversation with Lana Kristine Jelenjev and James Victore about fear).
To illustrate all of this:
You can reframe how to meet your needs with your LinkedIn commitment.
Your needs for freedom and ease will be met because you’ll have a process and structure that you timeboxes and focuses your writing.
You’ll write faster, not spend longer than you need and have more time for other things.
Your needs for safety and acceptance can be met by surrounding yourself with a compassionate community who’ll cheerlead and celebrate you.
You can creatively find a way to meet all your needs even though at first it all seems scary and overwhelming.
As much as we need strategies for success we also needs strategies for the side effects of success.
- Celebrate serendipity
- Rely on your resilience
- Accept your feelings
What would you do now if you didn’t fear success?