First off Fear of Success is more common and real than most people think.
I couldn't believe the number of people telling you that you meant fear of failure when in fact you asked an even better question. See we all have fear of failure, but we all have stories in our life where we got past that fear and had some success.
Fear of success though is deep rooted.
We see in a good number of movies and TV shows growing up where the rich guy has a bad attitude, they're all alone, the kids are trying to bury them early for their money, and the competition is trying to put them back in the poorhouse.
We also get old enough to read or watch the news where we are bombarded with stories of ex professional athletes and movie stars who blew through 100 million or more on partying, and bad investments. People who had a college education, a dream job, agents, and investment bankers on speed dial, and lifetime endorsements for new money and they still go bankrupt and lose everything.
We only hear the stories of the ones who fail because nobody turns to page 6 to read about Warren Buffet, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, the Koch Brothers etc.. They scoff at the cars and houses and investment portfolios and tell themselves that could never be me or that these people can't possibly be happy.
What's worse is even if we figure out the failures of others in the spotlight need not be our own we still have to ask if this really could happen to us.
My dad, and I say this with love, was one such person who had to tear down the things that were working because he learned to fear success. He was married twice before my mom and had a good career as a Chef for Holiday Inn, and later as partner in a detective agency and owning several restaurants of his own. Both those marriages saw the beloved wives cheat on him and divorce him taking a good share of what he built up, mostly because he was married to the work that bought them nice things.
As a result, by wife 3 and kids 2 and 3 AKA me and my Brother he was scared to death of building too much because he feared that when we didn't need him any more we would all leave as had happened to him before. He owned his own business but instead of living in houses and saving money we lived in motels and ate in restaurants eating the profits up as fast as the money was made.
Even when I started my first business at 14 and our earnings went up to nearly 80,000 a year he would find ways to spend the money. We always has a couple cars, were building yet another Motor Home Bus, had computers and Nintendo with tons of games, and more movies than we really had room for while still eating out and taking yearly trips from Southern California to Florida and South Georgia.
The money went fast and even when it landed us broke down and broke in Clark Florida and put us living 4 people to the bed of a pickup trying to scrounge money for repairs and gas, he still didn't start saving anything back.
Fear of success is real, even when you don't learn it from the movies or TV it still hits and it is still based on the fear of the unknown meeting the idea of what others have gone through.
To get past it we have to each decide that the fate of others is not our own, that we deserve success, and that we will have a wonderful life. We need to tell ourselves each day that this is the life for us, that we will always be kind, always help others, always value our family, always love a kind and merciful God. Once we realize this we are no longer afraid to succeed.
Have a blessed 2015.
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First off Fear of Success is more common and real than most people think.
I couldn't believe the number of people telling you that you meant fear of failure when in fact you asked an even better question. See we all have fear of failure, but we all have stories in our life where we got past that fear and had some success.
Fear of success though is deep rooted.
We see in a good number of movies and TV shows growing up where the rich guy has a bad attitude, they're
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