It’s been more than two months since I’ve made substantial progress on the creative project I’m most passionate about. “Why is that?” I ask myself.
I’ve fallen into this pattern of almost fishing something far too much, and I don’t think I can attribute it solely to ADHD and my constant penchant for chasing random mental squirrels. I think there’s something more. The reality, I think, is that I’m afraid of success, and I think I’ve been that way ever since I can remember. Does it seem odd to fear success more than failure? It’s not as odd as one would think.
At the core of the fear of success is the fear of change. The fear of having something out of your control take place. The fear that the lack of control will affect something you’re truly passionate about.
A few months back, I began writing a book. Like my last two books, it’s a resource for game masters of tabletop roleplaying games. In this case, it’s a collection of “magical tattoos” that can be etched onto a character’s skin to provide benefits or misfortune when activated. The contents of this book flew from my brain to my fingertips faster than perhaps anything that I’ve ever written.
Now that I’m on the layout/formatting part of the book, I keep finding excuses to do anything else other than that. Though the design side of publishing is not in my wheelhouse, I managed to complete a great and to-the-point Udemy course on the subject. So now I theoretically have the tools to complete my book, and yet there it sits, collecting cyber dust.
What’s a guy to do now that he knows the sticking point that’s holding him back? Well, as G.I. Joe often said, “knowing is half the battle.” Making oneself conscious of apparent weakness is the best step to tackling that weakness.
The fear of success doesn’t serve me like other fears (such as the legitimate fear of getting distracted and crashing my car). Therefore, it’s something I’ll be working on. Rather than simply saying, “I’ll stop being afraid,” I plan to chunk down my responses to this fear. Because my morning creative time is a bit spotty these days, I’m giving myself weekly goals rather than daily. For instance, for this week, I plan to get the entirety of my text imported into Scribus, the free publishing software I’m using. The following week will focus on getting the illustrations completed, followed by a week of plugging them into the right pages, followed by a week of finalizing the table of contents and a final week of working out remaining formatting issues with the book.
Broken down like that, the project doesn’t seem so daunting. That’s because success is a journey; it’s not a destination. Through reaching miniature goalposts along that journey, I’m given small doses of success that are easier for my reptilian, survival-obsessed brain to handle.
Another proven tactic for dealing with success is to make a plan when feelings of panic arise. “When I recognize a fear of success, I will…” In this case, I plan to take the reins of my inner dialogue. Through positive self-talk, I can reassure my brain that I will, in fact, survive the changes associated with success, therefore releasing serotonin and making the changes feel less dire.
Fear is a survival technique that has served modern humans well for at least a few hundred thousand years. As we increase our reasoning abilities, however, we have the responsibility to analyze fears and filter out the ones that don’t serve us.
Which fears are holding you back? How do you plan to tackle them?
