LAZARIS

Working with the Fear of Success ...


One has heard so often in the world out there about fears of
failure. It was presented perhaps a decade ago as this revelatory
understanding that there is fear of success.

        And it became something of a catch phrase, something of a
buzzword. "Your problem is you have fear of success." And it's
true for many people. Ironically, for many people the fear of
success is much bigger than the fear of failure. You have learned
through conditioning, from the time you were a very small infant,
to cope with and deal with failure. Everyone has faced failure
many times. You can and do cope with failure. Likewise, you have
come to face success as well. However, the "conditioning" to deal
with and cope with success is never as thorough or as
frequent.Therefore, truly so, success is more frightening than
failure is.

        However, the FEAR OF SUCCESS became such a catch phrase,
such a witty, wise thing to say, that no one stopped to look at
... "Well, what does that really mean?"

        The psychological concepts come forth in terms of
contractual arrangements with parents. They are contracts like: "I
will follow your footsteps, and I will never be better than my
dad." Or they come in living up to the parental expectations, the
slot that you were put in, your place in the family constellation.
Lots of psychological concepts were presented, and again, they
were very correct.

        But here is what to look at now in this monumental decade,
the 1990s. One could elaborate for hours on each of these
dynamics, but briefly the mechanisms are as follows:

                                                ~


        ONE: First of all, success is scary because of the weight
one gives it, the weight one places on what it means.

        If you hold it inside that success means you're smarter,
craftier, wiser or "slicker" (in the negative meaning of the word)
than others, then success is very frightening.

        If you hold that because you're successful you are therefore
superior to or "better-than" other people -- that you are
"entitled," that you are "endowed," that you have a right to be
arrogant -- then success is scary.

        When you hold that success validates you as being good and
whole and right and true -- or when you hold that success
exonerates you from things that would make a less successful
person have to work with forgiveness (which truly does relieve the
past) -- then success is scary.

        If you attach these kinds of meanings, you weigh down
success. Here's success, this thing, this essence. If you hang
onto it all these weights of better-than, smarter, craftier, you
make it far too heavy. And if you make it so very heavy, it begins
to wobble, and indeed it can collapse. Therefore, success is scary
because of the weight one gives it.

        Further, it's scary because it never does any of those
things. It never does make you smarter. It never does vindicate or
validate you. It never does exonerate you or make you a perfect
person. And if you hold that it will, success becomes very
frightening.

        So the first thing that makes success really scary is the
weight that is attached to it.


                                                        ~

        TWO: What's also frightening about it is that success is
part of a creative dynamic. Whenever something is created, there's
always something else that is destroyed. This is why Rollo May
referred to the courage to create -- because there is always that
conflict. As you create something, something else is destroyed. If
nothing else, ignorance is destroyed. And this very dynamic of
creativity also applies to success. It'll often be followed with
guilt -- feeling guilty that you've done something, that you've
changed the order of things, that you've stepped outside the
normal range.

        There may even be a feeling of doubt: "Have I done the right
thing? What if I'm not heading in the right direction?" It's so
very strange. We hear so many people who are succeeding
wonderfully well, but their fear is: "Yes, but what if this wasn't
what I was meant to do? What if I was supposed to become something
else? Suppose my destiny was something else? What if I've somehow
managed to land in this arena of success, and I'm flying along
like crazy, and one day will wake up and realize I've missed the
boat?" Doubt and the concern around that -- that's part of the
creative function. Therefore, we would suggest here it's
frightening.


                                                ~

        THREE: Success is also frightening because success carries
chaos with it. We call success Light Chaos. But in your world,
you're geared and conditioned to have no chaos at all. It's an
outgrowth of adolescence where life is so absolutely, unbelievably
chaotic that you try to stabilize it with the absolutes -- the
always's and never's, the black's and white's -- of adolescence.
And you have come out of that period with the belief that, above
all, you should not have chaos. Above all, have things orderly and
smooth. And success has chaos. It brings chaos.

        Success therefore erupts and brings forth what we call the
"root emotion." Whenever success occurs, it brings out the dark
side of self, turmoil and trouble. Therefore, of course, whenever
chaos exists, chaos brings the eruption, or at least the
disturbance, of the dark side. It brings out the Dark Law -- that
basic, unbelievable truth that you hold onto. "I can never be
happy," or "I will never be successful," or the various negative
beliefs that you've now made into a Law.

        Chaos brings questioning and the issue of reviewing self.
All chaos does, whatever kind, be it physical or emotional, mental
or spiritual. It also brings up issues from the past, issues from
childhood.

        So there are a number of reasons success is scary, in and of
itself. And
if you can understand that it is scary, and you can anticipate
certain of these fears, then we would suggest you can resolve
them.

                                                ~

        FOUR: One of the biggest reasons success is scary is because
of what we call a faulty foundation. When you build a house, you
lay a foundation and do all the things that are proper according
to code. Then upon it you plan to erect a two-story residence.
Well, if in the midst of waiting for that foundation to dry, you
decide, "I think I'll make better use of the space and build a
ten-story skyscraper on top," the foundation won't hold.

        What we mean by the foundation is the motivation. Why do I
want to be successful in the first place? If the reason is not
solid, if that's not the proper foundation -- solid or not -- then
it's going to lean, to tip, to crack and crumble. And success,
like a house of cards, will come down.

        And what we mean by faulty foundation is: If you're trying
to be successful in order to punish someone, that's a faulty
foundation.

        "I'll show them. All those kids in school who said I'd never
amount to anything -- I'll show them, and I'll go back and rub
their noses in it." Or, "I'll show my father," or "I'll show my
mother." Or, "I'll get 'em and make them suffer. I'm going to be
successful and then walk all over them."

        Those are faulty motivations. We didn't say they're wrong or
bad. We're not judging them. We're simply saying that they can't
weather the weight of success.

        If you're doing it to vindicate yourself, it's a faulty
foundation. Vindication is a fascinating thing, because your
consensus reality tells you to do things to vindicate yourself. It
never works. Vindication has never worked. "I made a mistake, so
now I'm going to do it right, and that will somehow expunge the
record." No, forgiveness works, vindication doesn't.

        Therefore, if you're trying to succeed to vindicate yourself
-- "I really screwed up in my 20s and now in my 40s I'm going to
be a triumphant success and that will expunge the record" -- it
won't work. It never does. Even if you have a magnificent success,
it never erases anything. Forgiveness can, but not vindication.

        If you're doing something as a way to win approval, to win
praise, to win the acceptance of another, it's a faulty
motivation. Again, we're not saying it's a bad motivation. We're
saying that it's too weak. It can support "this much" success for
approval, for praise, but it can't support "this much more". When
you pile this much on, OK. But more than that, and it starts to
wobble and crumble. Indeed you can sabotage yourself and end up
punishing yourself simply because the foundation, the motivation,
the reason you want to be successful is faulty.

        So from the weight of what you attach to the success, to the
very foundation underneath it -- from the creative process to the
chaotic process in between -- those are four very specific reasons
(and there are others) why it's scary.

        Now, if you can understand that for yourself, then you can
change your motivations. You can rebuild and restructure a whole
different foundation for being successful. You can take the weight
off and realize that it's not going to make you smarter or better-
than or give you license. You can be prepared for the chaos, and
when it comes, you can work with it. You can handle it. You don't
have to freak out and run away. You can be prepared for the guilt
and doubt that's going to arise in the very dynamic of creativity.

        So now when success comes, it doesn't have to be scary. And
what fear is remaining, you can right. You can have the confidence
to know that you can overcome it.

        Now, certainly, there are a certain number of approaches and
techniques one works with, but that, in a nutshell is what we're
talking about when one
looks at the fear of success.

~

        Similarly, we have talked about fear itself. Fear is scary,
yes? Everyone knows that, but no one really stops to look at why.

        Certainly indeed fear is scary because it threatens not so
much death, although the threat of destruction is a part of it.
Mainly it's scary because it threatens impotence. An example:
Perhaps you're not so much afraid of dying as you are afraid of
pain in the process of dying. And even scarier is feeling that
pain and not dying, and therefore having to live the rest of your
life with that. That impotence -- that's the threat that fear
offers.

        But more than that, fear threatens the withdrawal of
affection. Fear threatens the exposure of the Dark side of self.
Fear also threatens the exposure of the Light Side of self, the
positive qualities that people have that they've similarly learned
to tuck away. It's what psychologists call the Shadow, the Dark
Shadow and the Light Shadow. Fear threatens to expose them both.

        Fear threatens also to produce or generate destruction. It
threatens that you'll be totally obliterated, totally demolished -
- and short of it that, you won't have the gift of death, but that
you'll have to survive.

        And fear blackmails. Fear says, "If you don't watch out,
we're going to cause you to have love withdrawn, and you're going
to end up all alone and lonely." Or, "We're going to expose you,
and everyone will see your ambition, and your aggressiveness, and
the pride and hostility, and all those ugly things you thought you
had hidden so well." Or, worse yet, "We're going to expose you,
and they're going to see your power and strength and talent and
all the beautiful parts that you've hidden away."

        It's blackmail, just as if someone said, "We're going to
expose something, so pay up." Well, that's what fear does. It
says, "If you don't cooperate with us, if you don't be afraid of
us, then we're going to do something, and you'd better pay up."

        And as with any blackmail, if you expose it, you're safe.
Why would love be withdrawn? What would happen to intimacy, the
caring? What is that Dark Side that you're so afraid of, or the
Light Side that you're even more afraid of? What could be the
potential physical damage or maiming or impotence that would be
there? What is the loneliness that would be there? What is the
loneliness that it really threatens?

        And as you can expose that to yourself, then you reduce --
not eliminate, but reduce -- why fear is so scary. Once you reduce
it, then fear can once again become that instinct that is a
natural part of you -- the survival instinct of fight, flight,
reproduce and feed yourself. It can become the teacher.

        Fear was your first teacher, the very first one you ever
had. The fear of mother withdrawing the nursing, the love, the
nurturing. It is a great teacher. It is a motivator, certainly so.
If necessity is the mother of invention, then too often the father
of invention is fear. It can be a great motivator, and we would
suggest it also haunts and looms. But it can also warn you, cause
you to remind yourself and to keep within the boundaries of your
own self and your own direction. Fear can be the boundary to let
you know when you're getting off course.

        So it can be very positive if you can take away the
blackmail. And in that scope, once you remove the blackmail then
you can learn to work with fear, and it doesn't have to be so
frightening. It doesn't have to be the enemy. In fact, it can
become a strange, but nonetheless very valuable, ally. And in this
time,  it is so important that people really not just say the
words and let them pass on by, not just pay lip service to "fear
of success," but that they also dig into it and really resolve
these issues.

        In this decade the greatest of fears and the greatest of
joys will be there for humanity -- in an individual and a
collective way -- to embrace. As you learn to handle both your
right of success and the mask or the shadows of fear, then you can
more readily choose the greatest joys and greatest of dreams, and
work with and use those fears to implement them. ...

With love and peace ...
Lazaris

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