Fear of Success

by Ruth Brown

Fear of success is really wrapped up in two scenarios in my opinion and a solution can't be found until the underlying problem is addressed.

One: the person finds the other side of success unattractive in its entirety or certain elements to that job are distasteful or thought to be too hard.  The solution to this is to either stop the pursuit of something you don't truly want (a writing career is easily abandoned since it's voluntary and involves no one else) or to gain an understanding of exactly what the perceived hard parts entail so those parts no longer seem insurmountable.  Traveling?  Promotion?  Writing a second book?  Dealing with the business portion?

Two: the person really has a fear of failure, but prefers to disguise that by making sure failure doesn't come, i.e. one cannot receive a rejection letter if no queries/submissions are ever sent.  It feels better to say one has not even tried to go through a door, than to say one was denied access.  The solution would be, of course, to submit material and admit that success is not a given we must avoid.

A lot of writers I know suffer from one or both to a degree.  I personally prefer not to travel alone and find the thought of going on book tours without a companion depressing, so I already know that I will either have to overcome that or enlist someone to travel with me each time.  I also hate traveling by plane, so that would put a big crimp in a lot of travel plans.

Overcoming the fear of success or failure is possible, but only after the true cause is revealed.  In a few cases, discovering exactly what makes us fearful alleviates the fear immediately.  In most cases, however, retraining our minds to approach something fearful with a different attitude is needed.  In a writing career, learning to remember we do have a great deal of control will lend power and power conquers fear.