I was recently asked if I had ever experienced “fear of success.” I had to be truthful and answer in the affirmative.

I have owned my organizational consulting business for over 18 years. I work with senior level managers to create more inclusive and profitable cultures where people can do their best work. I also speak and write on How to Overcome Fear and Self-doubt, from my own experience.

I can certainly talk about overcoming the fear of success. I had to get a lot of support for mine. There are ten important steps to overcome that fear. Here are three of them.
• “It’s lonely at the top.” We start imagining how hard it will be once we are successful and get overwhelmed, visualizing ourselves alone without support. Getting past that entails reframing how we imagine what it means to be successful. We need to imagine in our minds or on paper what success would look like for ourselves and let ourselves feel confident and comfortable in that success.
• Create or join a mastermind group- it has been so helpful to me to interact with other business owners with whom I can be totally honest about my fears that I will be successful and then lose everything I’ve worked for with one wrong decision. I’m able to see that most of my fears are not grounded in reality.
• Develop a strategic plan and focus on one step at a time instead of future tripping. it will be easier to grow into success and less overwhelming.

I used to be so afraid of success that I would sabotage myself and then become comfortable with failure. I can now recognize when I’m going in the wrong direction and stop it.

I would be glad to go into further detail about any of these points if you would like or talk with you about several more if needed.