Successful

1. Accomplishing an aim or purpose: “a successful attack on the town”.
2. Having achieved popularity, profit, or distinction.

Is it when you have everything you want and its all in balance? Or are you shooting your energies all in one direction and the idea of balance is irrelevant? It’s important to know.

During Monday’s tele-seminar, I talked about the fear of failure and the even more prevalent fear of success. Back in 1985, Dr Pauline Rose Clance wrote a great book entitled The Imposter Phenomenon — Overcoming the fear that haunts your success.  Good read.

She reveals that human beings often feel out of sorts with their capabilities and doubt that their success is real. Her research indicated that 70% of Americans who reach success credited it to things other than their talents — luck, timing, hard work, connections but not their own intelligence and ability. You think maybe this is simply modesty? Not quite. The finding that there is the reality of a constant fear that the success would all evaporate is what makes this study so intriguing. The fear is that “…sooner or later someone will tear away their mask of success and discover the truth.”

She explains however that there are practical solutions to the problem. This is important because otherwise people who should be living happily and enjoying their success are locked into fear and self doubts that make it tough for them to relax and feel comfortable with what they have achieved.

The answers come with self assessments — looking at what you value and what set your sights upon in terms of goals to reach for. You need to know if you believe your reach has virtue and integrity. You need to know that your accomplishments have come at the cost of your good work and genuine talents, and you need to be able to relax into believing your success is a positive and not an arrogance.

The trick is to seek being genuine, never allowing yourself to become artificial. Clance explains that it is necessary to admit there is a mask worn in society to present a false impression of a super human person — removing it is the first step. Here are some steps that follow:

2. record when you doubt your ability to succeed at a task, attend to your feelings and acknowledge them — denying them makes it worse…listen to your inner dialogue and make note of how punitive you are towards yourself;

3. also record how you actually performed — did you fear failure and make it happen or did you progress through to success;

4. allow yourself to think about how uptight you behave or how willing you are to simply be human and vulnerable, approachable, and genuine. People love people who are just real people — successful and all.

Trying to decide what mask to wear is exhausting, and confusing to your inner most self. We have a genuine desire to allow others to see who we really are — those who do and who really love us are our best friends.

It’s all about living happily, enjoying the success you have dreamed about, intended, worked for, earned from your talents. Remove your mask and let the world experience the goodness that is your leadership and virtue.

You don’t need to feel like the weight of the world is upon your shoulders, none of us is Atlas. Be real, trust your abilities, believe that what you have worked for is valiant and right. Enjoy.