By Steve Wells
Many people think they are suffering fear of failure when what they really have is fear of success. In fact, I think many people are suffering from fear of success masquerading as fear of failure.
On what basis do I say this?
If I ask my clients or workshop participants to think about being successful and having achieved their goal, then ask them to step into the picture and feel how it will feel, they don't typically report feeling good; most say instead that they feel uncomfortable! They are often hit by massive feelings of anxiety and overwhelm, and tend to report all sorts of negative thoughts and beliefs coming up such as, “I don’t deserve this;” “I’m not good enough;” and so on.
If this happens to you as well, you're not alone.
Many people have all sorts of negative associations and emotional attachments to being successful. And this is what we need to release using tapping. Ultimately, unless success–however you define it–makes you feel good, unless you are attracted toward it, why would you want to manifest it in your life?
A Positive Mixed With a Negative
Many people, when I question them about their goals, don't have a totally positive goal at all. What they have is a positive mixed with a negative. The negative is what they believe will come along with the success or that would be required in order for success to happen for them–and in their mind the positive and the negative are linked together so you can’t have one without the other. Does this sound familiar to you?
For example, I once spoke with a gentleman who said that if he were to become successful he would lose his marriage! Well, if that were truly the case and he really loves his wife why on earth would he choose to become "successful"?
I told him his current version of success "sucked" (technical term) and he needs to create a new version of success where he gets to stay happily married (since he really wanted to), as his current version of success was really failure. Like many people he had trouble seeing a different possibility because in his mind the choice was represented as an “either-or” conflict where one side has to win and therefore the other must lose; rather than a “yes, and … ” where both sides can win.
Ultimately, if you have not achieved your own goals, then at some level you probably have similarly confused emotional attachments.
Creating inner alignment so that all parts of you are pulling in the same direction has been a major part of my work with tapping in the area of peak performance.
I’d like to outline here for you some ways of going about treating these blocks and barriers so that you can ultimately go for your goals without feeling blocked or feeling like part of you is holding back.
Treating Success Blocks with Tapping
One way to begin when treating blocks like this with tapping is to think about what would be the inevitable consequences of being successful for you–both positive and negative–and then to apply tapping to both sides of this conflict.
Start first with the negatives that may come with success. As Carol Look likes to ask: What could (or would) be the downside of being successful?
It’s not trendy to acknowledge the negatives that might eventuate from success. We’re supposed to assume that all change will be positive. But unless we can prepare ourselves for a realistic picture of success we will push it away from ourselves. Unless we can be comfortable with success we will sabotage it or be unable to handle it.
Witness the many people who win the lottery or inherit money only to squander their new-found wealth, and the many athletes who get to the Olympics then get overawed by the hype and aren’t able to perform.
Actually unless your body-mind can handle success and everything it would bring you will fear it and have parts of you acting against allowing it to manifest in your life.
For me, increased levels of success meant more opportunities to travel and the inevitable conflicts with the needs of my family and my desires to be with them. This conflict needed to be resolved; otherwise I would always feel divided and guilty whenever I was pursuing one and not the other. I could see myself being very successful on the world stage but miserable without my family.
How to treat such binds?
Begin by asking yourself: What do I want? What is success to me and what would that look and feel like?
Now consider the positive and negative things you associate (attach) to being successful.
For example, I have personally had to treat all of the following associations to being successful:
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If I became financially successful I might not be spiritual.
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If I became successful I might lose my family
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If I became successful I might have a lot more pressure on me to perform, as well as a lot more pressure on my time and I might not have time to do what I want to do.