What is Fear of Success?

“Success requires no apologies. Failure permits no alibis.” ― Napoleon Hill

For a major part of my life, I had a fear of success. Early on in life, I wasn’t even aware of such a concept. Once I did find out about it, I at first denied having it, and then it took me years to really grapple with and deal with my fear of success. Before I truly dealt with it, I stumbled through small amounts of success through sheer willpower -- simply because I wanted it bad enough. Once I dealt with it, I unlocked years upon years of success for myself across my personal and business life.

If one of us were to have a bullet wound in the chest and to be bleeding, people would recognize it right away; we would feel the pain right away; and the entire world around us would come together to help us heal the wound. Immediately.

Unfortunately, we and the world surrounding us are not likewise equipped to deal with deep-rooted issues like fear of success. And although as a society we’ve grown by leaps and bounds to recognize mental health issues such as depression, the deep programming we have within us around success, money, motivation, and beliefs is nearly impossible to spot unless we ourselves take time to look within.

Back in 2012, my company, ToutApp, was a four-person company. We had raised a little bit of money; we created software that people loved; and it was generating revenue. Much like the early days of a startup, there were glimmers of hope, and early traction,  but I was stuck. I knew I wanted more from my business, but I just couldn’t get myself to move forward. I felt like someone who was running forward, but there was an invisible hand holding me back no matter how hard I worked and no matter how much harder I pushed forward. 

I just told myself… “This is supposed to be hard. I’m supposed to hustle. I just need to put in more hours. More time. More effort. More energy. More, more, more… Nothing huge comes easy.” 

And yet… as if there was a thermostat set inside of me for my success to be at a four-person company, no matter how much cold air I blew into the room through momentous effort, the internal thermostat kicked in and just neutralized the effort, keeping the company at four people. 

I had already adopted the things I teach in this book. I dreamt. I believed in my vision of creating a thriving software company. I paused and reflected every Sunday. I visualized how one day I’d walk into a huge office and it would be packed with people buzzing away at serving our customers and building features I had only dreamed of. And yet… we were stuck at four people. 

I knew something was wrong, but I couldn’t figure out what. And so I did what I did every time I hit a roadblock. I started reading books on being stuck. I started googling about feeling stuck. Eventually I came across the concept of limiting beliefs, upper limiting, and fear of success. 

I then came across an exercise that changed my life. The exercise was simple. It was a set of questions that walked me through to an understanding of my core fear and of what exactly was the limiting belief that was holding me back.