Success Can Be Scary, Too | Imposter Syndrome

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Hey, Hey, this podcast is sponsored by The From Imposter to Empowered course. This is my 10 step signature methodology to find and defeat your limiting beliefs, overcome your imposter syndrome and to help you become the most successful version of yourself and drop the shit that has been holding you back. This signature methodology is something that I use with my clients and they have had amazing breakthroughs because of it. 

 

They've signed clients directly. After our calls, they have gone on to break through income barriers. I've worked with five figure and six figure entrepreneurs. Honestly, I got to tell you guys, we all have the same fears. We all have the same things that hold us back, but it just takes a little bit of the unclogging of your drain. As I like to say that unclogging of all the shit is just unclogging the way in which abundance and success and money can flow through. And that course helps you do that. You can go to the link in my show notes, and you can use F I T E podcast for 15% off the course. Everybody talks about fear of rejection or fear of failure, but very rarely do we talk about the fear of success. You may have heard me talk about the other shoe effects on my Instagram. 

 

You're always waiting for the other shoe to drop. It's that nagging feeling that things can't be this good and that you need to stay vigilant because if you let up on the gas, something bad is going to happen. Fear of success can look like a number of different things: 

 

1.) It can look like a fear of having to maintain it. Let's say you get all these clients and things are going really good and you start thinking "oh my God, so now I have to continue to coach these people". And "now I have to continue putting myself out there".

 

2.) Maybe you fear that you're going to become unrelatable to the people in your life because you're not going to be doing the same things as them. You're going to be surpassing them in terms of whatever you're accomplishing.

 

3.) If you're highly empathetic, you could also have fear when you see that not everybody is super jazzed about somebody else's success, which is because of what's going on in their own lives. Sometimes they even project onto you in terms of what they think you should be doing or how they think you should be.

 

And again, these are examples of fear of success. Think of your brain like an outdated HP laptop that receives regular updates, but the hardware stays the same, even through all of the new technology. Due to the fact that it's so outdated, it can actually overreact when you're not actually in danger. Remember how we talked about that your brain interpreting physical danger similarly to the way it interprets emotional danger... so even if you're not actually at risk of dying, sometimes your brain takes a situation and thinks that you are. And that's why sometimes we're so afraid of risk and afraid of taking risks. It's because our bodies and our brains convince us that we are at risk. Your brain is constantly scanning your environment for danger. When things are going really well your brain is like, well, we have to find something to worry about. I want you to see this as just the way that your brain functions and that there's not actually anything wrong with you.

 

I think what happens is that people, especially healers and coaches etc., are really attuned with how people are. We're really in tune. We're really attuned with the universe. We're really attuned to what's going on around us. We can confuse anxiety and fear with intuition. And that intuitive feeling in your gut is going to be very different than this fear that you are creating in your head. If you are really into the law of attraction, you could also see it as you manifesting an experience in which you don't want to happen simply because you can't stop thinking about it. I was in the bath and I was getting so excited thinking about how the rest of the year is going to be amazing and there's going to be so many things happening... My brain instantly was like, okay, she's feeling too good right now. Let's make her think that something terrible is going to happen in the next couple months. And of course, anxiety thrives on vagueness. 

 

I didn't really know what was wrong. I just started to feel. This is just an example of your brain on overdrive. Again, it is constantly scanning your environment because if you're feeling too good it thinks you're going to be in danger. If you're not hyper aware of everything that is going on in your environment. I look at it as just a function of my brain and coming back down to reality and realizing that I am okay... I am safe. What I focus on expands. If I'm going to focus on my success and my abundance and all the amazing things that that are going to happen, I am attracting that more into my life. It doesn't mean that there aren't going to be things that come up that are inconvenient, but how does it help you to thrive on the possibility of something bad happening? 

 

I knew somebody when I was in university and she would always fear the worst. She was always afraid of everything happening. And again, the problem is not the emotion. The problem is how you're responding to it. She had a lot of really bad anxiety about stuff that was never going to come true and still hasn't come true to this day, but she let the behavior go down the path of self sabotage. So I want you to realize that when you are experiencing the other shoe effect, I want you to come back down into your body and realize "I am safe right now in this moment", and if you need to do some EFT tapping, you can totally do that. Bring yourself back down to the ground, really ground yourself, and realize that you are safe in this moment. It is safe to dream. It is safe to find joy. It is safe to feel abundant. It is safe to be happy. 

 

The same goes for when you're experiencing a lot of success, which it's going to happen, especially if you're listening to this podcast. I hope that you listen to this often so you can get over that inner imposter that's trying to hold you back. When you experience that success and you start to feel nervous again thinking, "this is too good to be true. Remind yourself that you are safe in your body, that you are safe right now and that it is safe to feel joy. It is safe to have fun and be abundant because that is what is going to attract more into your life. You don't want to be manifesting the wrong shit. You don't want to be manifesting these bad things happening to you. You want to manifest more joy and more play and more abundance. And you can't do that.

 

I also want you to do that if you had a very tumultuous childhood; if you had an experience as a young adult or a child that didn't make you feel safe. For example, I had a client who had something abrupt and traumatic happen to her and she didn't see it coming. She has always been anxious and hypervigilant moving forward because she was so shell-shocked and traumatized from that experience that she never wanted to feel that way again. She is always waiting for the other shoe to drop. If that's happening for you as well, I really suggest you do some trauma work, or even just do some journaling, maybe grab the From Imposter to Empowered course at the link in my bio or at the link of my show notes, and help yourself go back to those roots of where it may be coming from. If you are constantly paralyzed by not only the fear of rejection or judgment or failure, but now you're also fearful of success as well, it would probably be really helpful to understand where those fears are coming from. The only way that you are going to get over that is to get through it - to look at the evidence and look at what you have to work with and help yourself release and forgive. 

 

Again, I think we have to remember that our brain is very primal. It is still responds in its very instinctual manner. And that's why a lot of us start off with negative thoughts about ourselves. An exercise that I do often with my clients is I have them write down 50 things that are good, that are going to happen. Usually we're so focused on what could go wrong, that we're not even thinking about what could go, right. And again, what you focus on expands. Your focus on your anxiety, your focus on the things that are going wrong in your business, your focus on why you don't feel good, those are all expanding. I'm not saying that we have to be oblivious to the things that are hard in our lives, but if you focus on giving yourself more compassion, if you focus on forgiveness and love and maintaining that feeling good and safe in your body, then you will create more of that. So I hope you guys love this mini episode about fear of success. If you have comments or questions, please don't hesitate to reach out to me on Instagram at @yourcoachjill

 

Thanks so much for listening to the From Imposter to Empowered podcast with me, Jillian Parekh. If you loved this episode, take a screenshot and share it on your Instagram story. And don't forget to tag me at @yourcoachjill of course I'd love for you to rate the podcast five stars and leave a review. And if you screenshot your review and send it to me at your code show on Instagram, I'll send you a free gift at the very least. Make sure you follow me on Instagram again at @yourcoachjill for tons of free content strategies and inspo. See you next time.

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