A lot of people have a fear of failure, and they are crippled by the thought of their venture not working out and suffering the humiliation that comes with it. A fear of failure, while not easy to overcome, can be conquered through persistent effort and learning from experience.
However there’s another fear that for most people, is even more limiting than the fear of failure. And that is the fear of success. It’s very counter intuitive to think that a person could be afraid of success, but if they get caught up in worrying about becoming successful, then it’s a downward spiral to self sabotage.
“What if I just make it?”… Some people can become petrified thinking about it. The fear of success really has more to do with the fear of change rather than anything else.
If you’re an active network marketer, you most probably will have visualised yourself as the successful person you want to be. You have visions of being surrounded by other successful friends, visions of being able to accomplish your dreams, visions of being kind and generous to others, visions of the possessions you have that reflect your success.
While these visions can be very powerful and positive, at the same time they can also be very scary when you realise that right now, you are nowhere near being that person.
The fear comes from realising that you’re going to have to change. That successful person you see yourself being is a completely different person to who you are now. So the fear comes from losing your identity, which leads to the fear of disapproval from people that are close, which may even lead to you losing your associations with them.
People are habitual creatures. Believe it or not… the things we think, feel and do today are 99 percent the same as the things we thought, felt and did yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that. We, as humans, easily slip into “comfort zones” and mindlessly go through our daily routines as if we’re robots.
It takes some mighty will power to change our habits. For instance, we think just change what we eat, stop smoking, stop drinking and live a healthy lifestyle starting today, but in reality we can’t because we have bad habits that prevent us from doing that.
Our habits are part of who we are. So when you make a decision to change them little by little, the people around you will begin to notice. They will see you making better life decisions like being less thrifty with your money, they will notice a difference in the way you speak, and they may not like you anymore because you have changed.
Some of your friends may think that wealthy people are all bad people, because of the stories they’ve seen on the news. So the fear of losing one’s associations and community can really sabotage success.
Another thing that can sabotage your success is fearing the burden of responsibility when you become a top level distributor in your company.
As a “diamond” distributor, you’ll have hundreds of people in your group who will want your assistance and training. Your phone may never going to stop ringing. You may get hundreds, even thousands of emails every day that you’ll have sort through.
And you think to yourself… “Oh my gosh, I don’t want to have to deal with all that!”
We can really jeopardise our success by worrying about things that could happen, but have not yet happened. Fear of success can be dealt with. If you find yourself worry about the negative things that might happen when you become successful, stop and think the other way.
Think of all the positive things you can do when you become the person you want to be. Think of the positive influence you’ll have on other people. Then decide if the positives of being a successful individual are worth it. In most cases, it is.
To your MLM success,
Wayne Wu
Founder, The Profitable Networker
P.S. I would love your input! If you have an opinion that would contribute to this discussion, please leave me a comment below.
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