3 Ways You’re Blocking Your Success—And What To Do About It

By Ashley Stahl, Originally Published in Forbes

What are you afraid of?

This is a question I ask my clients who know what they?want,?but won’t take the first steps to get it.?

Fear is an emotion sparked by a threat which, in turn, triggers our behaviors to avoid and cope with the threat.?These behaviors can show up in many different ways, but for everyone, it starts in the?amygdala, ?the portion of the brain that detects and defines emotions.?For some, fear can trigger a response of shutting down and freezing while others may react with rage or aggressive outbursts.?Either way, fear is a basic human function that, no matter how uncomfortable it is, ensures our survival.??

It’s important to think about what causes fear in general.?Historically, our fear protected us from actual threats to our survival in nature, from lions stalking tribes of people in the desert, to impending storms, which alerted tribes that it was time to prepare and store food.?In short, our fear is often primarily rooted in our human desire to survive. Today, it’s gotten out of hand. Now that we don’t live in a world where we typically need to watch out for saber toothed tigers, our fear has found a new focus: social acceptance by others.

What triggers your fear? Psychologists argue that most people’s patterns and beliefs about success and money are largely set by the age of seven.?This means that you must examine your childhood experiences to understand the roots of your fear.?The good news is, anyone can release the self limiting beliefs they bought into from childhood.??

In order to operate from a place of self-love, you must move out of this self-sabotage about success. It starts with identifying what your fear is, where it comes from and learning tools to overcome it.??

As a career coach, helping clients step into their power, I have identified three main areas of fear that could be sabotaging your life and career.

1. Fear of success.

Perhaps you are subconsciously worried that success will: (1) stack on a new pile of demands, (2) put you on a pedestal and push you away from those close to you, or (3) consume your time, or (4) leave emotionally cold or alone.?

If you subconsciously believe that success will hurt your life, you will not be able to welcome it in and as a result, you’ll limit your potential. This is why mindset work is so important.?

If this hits close to home, chances are you had a childhood where one parent wasn’t around much, or perhaps they sacrificed time with the family to create success in their career.?Another possibility is that you may have experienced success at a young age, causing your siblings or friends to build resentment towards you. Gay Hendricks describes this in his book?The Big Leap ?as the “fear of outshining” which leads to a self-inflicted limitation on your capacity, and what he calls an “upper limit” for success.

One way to overcome this is to surround yourself with people that are successful.?Research from?Psychological Science ?has found that actually watching someone interact with the harmful object or idea you fear helps eliminate your own negative response to it,?meaning perhaps you’ll be inspired to rise into more success when you surround yourself with successful people.?

You might be buying into the limiting belief that success will make you a mean person, or that the monetary gain will make people only want you for your money.?In some instances, this might be true, but challenge yourself to find people who have success and are still genuinely accepted and appreciated by others. The more you are around it, the less you will be afraid of it.?And chances are, you have heard the saying, “you are the sum of the five people you surround yourself with.” Well, if you surround yourself with successful people, the chances of becoming successful yourself will rise.?

Remember: who you spend time with matters.?A?study ?found that although friends bond by providing moral support, they are also just as likely to become partners in crime and give into poor behavior or making bad decisions.?So pick who you spend time with wisely.

If you resonate with fear of success, chances are you take yourself for granted a lot.?Begin to practice a success library. Build a repository of success stories for things you personally have accomplished or overcome.?List out how you got there, what it felt like and what happened after the success. When you are afraid to step up and take a risk or reach for higher success, revert back to reading it as an affirmation that success is possible, and it won’t kill you.?Unless you are actually fighting a lion... then that’s a different story.

“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.?The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”?-Nelson Mandela

2. Fear of failure.

Perhaps the thought of trying something new and different paralyzes you.?You don’t put your best foot forward in a project because if (or when) it fails, you at least know you weren’t giving it your all.?You are self-sabotaging big time, and as a result, walking around with a great deal of?regret and hidden shame.

Do you ever feel this way??Well, the negative experiences you had with fear growing up created an instinct to avoid failure as much as possible.?Perhaps your parents would punish you if you didn’t get good grades. Maybe that childhood crush you tried to kiss turned you down leaving you filled with rejection and shame.??

Shame ?is a very troubling emotion since it makes you feel bad, not just about your action, but about who you are.?This hits straight into your ego and knocks down your self-esteem.

It doesn’t help that in today’s society, failure is often viewed as being completely unacceptable.?Expectations are high and if you fail to meet them, you could lose your job, your spouse,your self confidence or your respect.?Chances are you have failed at least once by now, and these negative experiences are what shape our fear of failing again.????

So what do you do??Nothing. You cocoon yourself into a state of mediocrity and go along with the status quo because it feels safe, and a way to avoid those painful emotions.

I get it.The world can be scary.?But I don’t want you to stay this way, and neither should you.?Begin to map out the potential outcomes if you take a risk. Ask yourself: what’s the worst that can actually happen? Fear has a way of tripping us up into imagined failures that are unlikely or even impossible. You can use a tool such as a?decision tree ?to visually map out all the options you could take and what the foreseeable outcome will be.??

Start small, and create little goals each day that will build overtime into larger accomplishments.?This way, each small step won’t have too big of a failure potential and will build back your confidence overtime.?Through a study on Watson and Cricks discovery of the DNA Helix the?progress principle ?was defined: the more frequently people experience a sense of progress, the more likely they are to be creatively productive in the long run.?Progress is fundamental to human behavior and key to breaking free from from paralyzing fear of failure.

“Do the things you fear to do and keep doing it...that is the quickest and surest way ever yet discovered to conquer fear.”?-Dale Carnegie

3. Fear of the unknown.

Perhaps making decisions is terrifying and floods you with self-doubt, and you have become a creature of habit, so much so that you resist any changes that are in your control.?When you think about the future you procrastinate until you feel like you have enough information to act, even if it is too late.

DId I just describe you? Well, you are not alone considering that the fear of the unknown has been?proposed by scientists to be the fundamental fear of all fears .?If you experience any sort of anxiety disorder,?data supports a strong correlation ?between anxiety and fear of the unknown.

If you had?childhood anxiety, a core feature of your youth was likely filled with anticipation stress ?and led you to avoid new situations.?You may have only had a few friends, maybe you watched the same movies and read the same books over and over because you felt safe in what their outcome would be.?Or you might have moved around a great deal, feeling little to no control over your circumstances and generated anxiety from constantly walking into the unknown.

In order to help yourself in facing the unknown, you need to understand what is happening inside of you.?When an unknown circumstance arises in your?cerebellum , the part of your brain responsible for fine-tuning motor control and muscle memory has a?chain of neural connections? that can cause the body to automatically freeze.??

Combat this by doing something active as quickly as possible.?When you feel a sense of overwhelm or fear begin to creep in, lace up your shoes and go for a run. Or if you are at work, take a break and walk outside.?Aerobic activity stimulates the cerebellum and actually?increases the number of synapses per purkinje cell? (primary nerve cell in the cerebellum) to break you free of feeling so frozen.

Once you feel unfrozen, practice giving up some of the control in your life. Perhaps you go out on a limb and try something completely new (like learning an instrument or taking an acting class).?Walk into the experience with no attachment to the outcome, or pass part of a project that doesn’t need much more work left onto a new coworker.??

Find something with low risk, pass it off and see how it goes.??

Allowing fear into your life is a slow process and does require small incremental steps.?It is okay to feel the fear; it’s what you do with it that matters most.?

“What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?”?- Vincent Van Gogh

For a FREE course to land a new job you love, launch your dream business, or find your purpose, visit https://ashleystahl.com/