Your Greatest Fear Is Not That You Will Fail — It’s That You Will Succeed
Why your subconscious mind is sabotaging your success
“One of the greatest discoveries a man makes, one of his great surprises, is to find he can do what he was afraid he couldn’t do.” — Henry Ford
In The War of Art, Stephen Pressfield writes that Resistance, as he calls it, feeds on fear. Fear of the consequences of following our hearts. Fear of failure. Fear of being ridiculous, fear of launching into the void and passing some point of no return.
These are serious fears, he claims: “But they’re not the real fear. Not the Master Fear, the Mother of all Fears that’s so close to us that even when we verbalize it we don’t believe it.”
Fear that we will succeed.
You’d probably argue that you’re not exactly afraid of success but of the opposite, which is failing at what you’re trying to achieve. Success — whatever that means to you — is what you’re after, not what you’re scared of, right?
Think again.
You’re so busy worrying about all the ways you could fail that you don’t see what you’re actually afraid of — that you will succeed. Because what happens then?
