2615 Why Do We Sabotage Ourselves Just As Success Gets Close? Lessons from a Seminar

 

The Trigger

At a seminar I attended recently, I heard about a psychology concept called “fear of success.” Nobody wants to fail, yet when success gets close, we unconsciously ruin it ourselves.

What Is Fear of Success

According to the speaker, when success approaches, people unconsciously feel fears like:

• Others might resent me
• My responsibility might grow heavier

As a result, they undermine themselves right before success. That is fear of success.

Funny, but Familiar Examples

The speaker’s examples were:

• Someone who searched for six months for an English conversation school suddenly cancels with “maybe it’s not right” just before starting.
• A bride and groom who run away on their wedding day.

It makes you laugh, but what’s interesting is that the person is serious, and finds a perfectly good reason to quit at that moment.

The speaker also said that when a company’s top executive is in this state, the company ends up making decisions that undermine its growth just when it is about to take off.

I Recognize It in Myself

To be honest, listening to this, I wondered if it was about me.

At a previous company, I was transferred to the project department. After that, though, I acted in ways that made me less visible, and stayed away from new work. Even when I became a project director, I could have stepped forward more and things would have gone differently, yet I drifted away from that role.

It wasn’t that I ran away when trouble came. It was that I never really tried to step onto the stage in the first place.

Perhaps the fears the speaker mentioned, that responsibility would grow heavier or that others might resent me, were quietly at work. I can’t be sure. But noticing an invisible frame inside myself was a real takeaway.

In Project Management Too

I felt this could apply to projects as well. Just as the project reaches the final stretch, a decision is suddenly postponed with “let’s consider it a bit more.” Right before release, what had already been agreed is overturned. The reason looks perfectly reasonable at the time.

Of course, not everything is fear of success. But it is worth stopping to look at what is happening in people and organizations when success draws near.

The speaker’s recommended question helps here. Instead of “Why?”, ask “What would happen? What becomes possible?” If we succeed, what happens? What becomes possible? Painting that picture together may make the fear smaller.

As I wrote in my last post, whether you can notice your invisible frames, your paradigms, changes the outcome. Noticing a frame that fears success may be one of them.

From now on, before stepping onto the stage, I want to ask myself: “If I step up, what happens? What becomes possible?”