“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the things you did do. So throw away the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor… Explore. Dream. Discover.”

- Mark Twain.

Let’s take a deep dive into the fear of success, because it’s possible that you’ve only considered the fear of failure. It seems that the more insidious and sneaky fear that derails peoples from being successful is the fear of success, which is the belief that something bad will happen if you become successful. It is important to take this apart and dissolve it because it could, on some sub-conscious level, hold you back from the natural actions and communications that will have you easily be successful. It could lead to some frustrating sabotage.

A client of mine shared that if he were successful and made a lot of money, then he might be irresponsible and spend his money too quickly and then be frustrated with himself. That fear of mismanaging his money was holding him back.

We’re going to do an exercise on this in a one-hour tele-seminar on Tuesday March 31 at noon Eastern time. If you are on my email list or subscribe to this blog, you will be notified of this tele-seminar and have access to the recording.

Let me give you the first steps in an exercise to disappear your fear of success.

- Take a piece of paper. Write on top: The Joy of Success.

- Draw a horizontal line halfway down page, thus splitting the page into a top half and a bottom half.

- On the bottom half, write the words “Dissecting The Fear of Success,” and draw a vertical line down the middle of the bottom half, splitting the bottom half into two columns.

- On to the top half first, write down a few words that represent what you would enjoy if you were successful, for example, relaxation and freedom. What would be there for you if you were successful?

- In the left hand column of the bottom half, write down some of the things that you would have to deal with if you were to be successful or moving towards success that you’d rather avoid. For example, sustaining a high level of demand and responsibility; or having all your time consumed; or being suspicious that people are only interested in you for your money; or that it will contradict a long standing self-image or attitude about wealth.

- In the right hand column of that bottom half, we will reframe each of those challenges or find solutions to them. We’ll talk more about that next week.

- We will also fill the top of the page with more words representing the joy of success.

So what about you? What are you afraid of on your road to success that you can be courageous about this week?