Date Posted: October 19th, 2009
A common mental block I run into when making some change in my life is a fear of success. What will happen if I succeed? And more specifically, will I be OK with the person I become if I succeed. I’m a cautious person. I don’t want to have to spend time repairing relationships or credit scores or anything else. Thus many times, rather than jump in head first, I’ll subconsciously stop myself from succeeding.
Does this sound familiar? Are you afraid of what people will think of you if you actually lose weight? Or more importantly, what you will think of you? Does that mean you’re the kind of person that’s focused more on physical appearance than inner beauty? Does that mean you’ll have to sacrifice something that’s important to you in order to make the time to eat well and exercise? Does that mean you’ll be the kind of person that sacrifices spiritual things for the physical?
Or what if you’ve always wanted to be an artist or an actor or a comedian? That culture has a reputation for promiscuity, ungodliness, and other not so wonderful traits. Does that mean you’ll have to develop those traits? Do you want to be that kind of person? Do you want to be thought of being that kind of person?
Or what about money? What if you were rich? How would you feel about being a wealthy person? What would that say about you? Is it something you want to be? Is it something you’re OK with being?
All of these things are fears of success, or more accurately fear of the kind of person you’ll become if you succeed.
There are a few ways you can tackle the problem depending on both your faith in your decision and your faith in your ability to deal with problems if it was the wrong decision.
Superman You have strong faith in your ability to fix problems associated with your change if they arise.
If you’re in this category, it doesn’t really matter how much you believe in your decision. Just dive in and see what happens. No matter how much of a hole you dig you’ll learn a lot, and you can climb your way out afterward if it’s not really where you want to go.
If you’re in this category, you probably don’t really have this fear of success thing either. 
“Compass say that’s the right direction, but the clouds are ominous” You’re fairly certain this is the right direction for you, but you’re a bit scared about what it means to be that kind of person. An example is the would-be artist who’s afraid of being the sinful person he envisions all artists to be.
There’s a few things you can do to ease this block:
- Identifiy what scares you Is it that you’ll be a bad person? That you won’t have time for what’s important? That you’ll have to drop all of your friends and family?
- Visualize yourself having your cake and eating it too Figure out how you can do the new thing, be the new person and still do what’s important to you.If you’re trying to stay your pious self, maybe while you’re pursing your art and getting to know artist type people you also spend extra time at Church or with people who keep you honest and good. Maybe find someone to talk to about the challenges you’re facing, someone who can honestly assure you when you’re still on the right track or who can warn you when you start veering off.
- Do it When your safeties are in place, start taking action to achieve your goal. If you’ve thought of everything, you should be able to make progress without your subconscious nagging you. And if you notice you still have the nagging feeling, figure out what it is and tackle it. Eventually you’ll weed all these issues out.
“My compass is broken” You aren’t even sure why you’re considering this goal.
This is deserving of its own post, but the short answer is:
- Figure out what’s important to you and where you want to go with your life
- Figure out what appeals to you about this goal
- Do those thing fit together?
If you can answer “yes” to question 3, then your compass isn’t the issue. Move on to the “Ominous Clouds” section.
Chances are you fall into one of these three categories. Hopefully this advice will give you some insight on how to deal what you’re facing.
At some point I’ll expand on the “broken compass” category, since a functioning inner compass is useful and not all that trivial to set up.
Tags:
Career, Character-Development, Intuition, Money, Psychology, Subconscious.
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Date Posted: October 16th, 2009
One of the most frustrating, demotivating situations in life is when you make a promise to yourself and you don’t keep it. Even worse when you’ve made it to both yourself and several other people. Then not only do you feel bad about yourself, but everyone you told thinks less of you too.
On the flip side, when someone you know is making promises to get better, but has a history of 0 follow-through, how do you deal? You already think negatively of him/her, but you want to support a change for the better. What do you do?
I’ve experienced both situations many times. I like improving myself, but more often than not (especially a few years ago) I’d make promises that I neither could keep or wanted to keep. I’d say I’m going to get up at 7AM every day and get a fresh start on my homework. I’d tell myself that. I’d tell Aaron that. The next morning I might get up and try it, realize that homework in the morning sucks. Moreover, getting out of a warm bed isn’t all that pleasant either. On the second day I’d quit. My promise: broken. My integrity: damaged a bit. Aaron’s trust in me: also a wee bit damaged.
Or maybe I’d say I’d finally spend the next few months learning a new language or intensively focusing on a new instrument. An hour a day on each, I’d say. Only to realize that the few times that hour was available I really didn’t want to work on either said instrument or said language. Another promise broken. Another reputation slightly damaged. Not cool.
Over time I’ve found a way to set goals without damaging my integrity. That process is the four steps below.
Step 1) Stop lying Don’t make false promises. You’ve been failing everything so far, so don’t make promises you don’t know you’ll be able to keep. Take the pressure off. For the time being couch everything in “I’ll try”, or “I’m attempting”.
This goes against the teachings of intention manifestation, since “maybe” or “I’ll try” are less comital. Saying those things might mean you aren’t serious about following through on your goal. I must say, though, that I’ve been able to achieve my goals a lot better when I’ve been honest, than when I’ve been delusional.
Step 2) Make small goals What I mean by small goals is things you’d like to do, you think you’re capable of, but haven’t done yet. Detatch yourself from the outcome. If you fail, that’s OK. Some good places to start are physical goals like exercise or diet, or mental goals like spending an hour this week writing or meditating. Just make sure they’re things you’re most likely to succeed at. Also make sure they aren’t indefinitely long. Promise you’ll wake up early tomorrow, not every day for the rest of your life. You want to have a chance to evaluate how you did.
Step 3) Do it
Step 4) Take notes on the experience How did you do? Did you do it? How do you feel having done it? Is it something you’d like to try to do again next week? Same thing? Make it harder? Make it easier? Do you want to try a different goal.
And that’s it. The important thing is to stop lying about your ability to keep your promises. Picking yourself up when you inevitably fail is a lot easier that way.
Eventually, you can start making promises about things you’re less sure you can do. When you’re less lackadaisical about making commitments, when you trust yourself to keep your word, you can make scarier commitments that force you to stretch yourself. Just don’t do it lightly.
What do I do when my friend is the one not keeping commitments? First have faith that she’s trying and really does want to make the change. Second consider talking with her about saying maybe and try instead of “I definitely will”. Talk some about how achieving her goal can be made easier, what are some of the pitfalls she might experience. Express that you want her to succeed. Etc.
If she’s open to listening to your advice, great. Make sure it’s heard as you helping her succeed and not you dashing her plans. Have some understanding and some empathy. It’ll go a long way toward her moving out of her rut.
If this post was interesting to you, you should check out Keeping Promises To Yourself. It’s more about why you’re having a hard time keeping those promises and some tricks to making following through more pleasant.
Tags:
Character-Development, Relationships, Self-Discipline.
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