Caterpillars and the Fear of Success
Unlike the self-explanatory fear of failure, the fear of success is much less discussed and rarely even recognized. It is subconscious by definition. I have never met anyone who openly admitted to being afraid or feeling uneasy when approaching the realization of their goals. Anyway, I’ve met quite a few people, including yours truly, whose actions in some decisive moments can hardly be explained in any other way.
For example, did you ever find yourself or someone else doing something like this:
- Undermining potential sales by offering additional meetings, documents, or demos instead of closing the deal.
- Overthinking the product and finding endless reasons to postpone delivery.
- Indulging in perfectionism.
- Becoming consumed with “one big thing that will change everything” and disregarding small, easily achievable victories.
- Coming up with various rational and irrational excuses to avoid social visibility and criticism.
Numerous other examples exist in various areas of human endeavor, but they all share a common thread: the individuals involved will never openly admit, “I’m afraid of achieving success.” So why is this the case? How is it possible? Well, here are a couple of reasons:
- If success is equated with wealth and an individual is raised in a family or culture that values humility above all else and associates money with greed and corruption, they will naturally be hesitant to become someone their value system despises.
- If someone takes pride in their ability to endure suffering and believes that suffering is morally superior to living a comfortable life, they will find it challenging to pursue something that might lead to an easier existence.
- Many of us unconsciously believe that life must involve a certain level of pain, and every success must be followed by unexpected troubles. The greater the success, the greater the trouble. Therefore, we choose not to strive for success.
While it is easy to intellectually understand the reasons mentioned above, mere cognitive understanding is insufficient when one seeks to change their behavior. According to certain psychological schools of thought, we tend to develop certain behavioral patterns in our childhood. We believe that, in order to feel safe or loved, we need to conform to a particular identity. Using the terminology of transactional analysis, we create a “life script” early on, and we continue to replay these childhood strategies, even when they result in pain or defeat.
Basically, something deep down inside us believes that we will lose ourselves if we reach our goals and ambitions. That’s what makes it scary and rightfully so. Something really dies in this process. Luckily, it is not ourselves, but the definition of ourselves that does not serve us anymore. Bill Plotkin eloquently captured this concept, stating: “Butterflies don’t make cocoons (nor morph into chrysalises). Caterpillars do. The cocoon means death to the caterpillar, an ending. The creature who fully appreciates the purpose of the cocoon is the butterfly — the beneficiary of the caterpillar’s demise.”
