Magnolia’s 6-Month Challenge: Day 35 Fear of Success

Don’t think I haven’t been thinking about this challenge and the fact that I haven’t been posting daily as I said I would.  I have.  Been thinking about it a lot.

Rather than whine about the fact that I’m struggling like crazy to figure this situation out  -  yeah, I know……what situation? ( um, the situation of being able to decide to do something and then actually follow through.  Which I clearly haven’t done a very good job of ?) I thought I might tell you what I think the real problem is.

Fear.

Namely: Fear of Success.

Huh.  You may be wondering.  Is there such a thing?  Well, yes.  Yes, there is.  Except most people (myself included) rarely take an honest look at said fear because they are spending too much time keeping themselves distracted by procrastination and excuse-making to face up the fact that they are scared shitless to make a change.

Never mind that the change that is needed is obvious, perhaps.  Or that it involves doing something that you’ve said you want to do and have wanted to do for most of your life – like a writing career for me.  It’s just so much easier to stay where we know the boundaries.  Even if those boundaries suck.

It’s easy to deduce that if one struggles with following through on change that it could be fear of the unknown.  And I’m sure there is an element of that to the situation.  But, really, at least for me, it’s not fear of the unknown, it’s fear of success. If you’ve never been successful, you just don’t know how it is supposed to feel.  You know how failure feels.  That’s like an old friend or an old pair of shoes.  Completely broken in and form-fitted.  It just feels right.

But success?  I don’t know what that feels like, so how will I know it when I have it? Okay, so maybe it is fear of the unknown.  Fear of the unknown success and how it may feel.

Okay, so, whatever it is: Fear of the unknown.  Fear of success or fear of the unknown success.  I must confess.  I have it.

I noticed this strange feeling beginning to emerge when the mess in my office was getting cleared up.  What this meant was, I was making progress toward a goal I had set.  Which was:

• Get your office organized

• Sell off all of your home school materials

• Set your office up to begin a serious writing and blogging career.

• Set up a schedule that I would actually follow through on every day

• Write.

So, as I got closer and closer to the last thing, which is to actually, you know, write. I began to get antcy.  At first I wasn’t entirely sure why.  I just knew that my anxiety levels seemed to rise in direct proportion to the amount of clutter that was being replaced by order in my office.

My analysis on the situation?  On a subconscious level, as I began to see that I was inching toward the process of working on what it is I say that I want, a writing career, I began to become afraid.  Watching my office clear up and become organized was the signal that it was time to “do” what I say I want to do.

I am finding this entire process fascinating.  Unnerving.  But, fascinating, nonetheless.  I hope my talking out loud is useful to you in some way.  If not, eventually, this blog will get around to becoming more about you.  But, for now, it’s still very much about me.