How to Overcome the Fear of Success

I’m hosting a Sex Writing Workshop on Thursday, May 16th, 2024. The event is limited to 30 people only. Paid Subscribers can scroll to the bottom to get a 50% discount code on their ticket! Here’s the story of how it’s going:

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Photo Cred: Mo

Introduction 

I’ve only sold one ticket to my next Sex Writing Workshop that’s coming up this Thursday, May 16th. Still, part of me has done this on purpose. Despite the hard work that I’ve put into building my writing career, I’m suddenly facing a massive inner wall of resistance. I have a colossal behemoth of deep, red-hot fear clinging to the front of my body. Why is this? In short, I am afraid of being successful. 

I wish I had a magic wand so I could just zap all this fear away. But as I sit with this right here right now, I am going to walk you through some strategies that I am putting into play right now to overcome this. I am first going to dissect where this fear comes from, and then I’m going to work up the courage to do the marketing, social media, and self-promotion I need to do to get the workshop out off the ground and move forward.

So, step aside, inner perfectionist! If you are also facing an internal crisis of staying comfortable or making a decision that could make your life more awesome and more successful, this piece is for you! Here are my tips for overcoming the fear of success: 

1.    Dig into what’s causing the fear. 

As I mentioned, the biggest source of all this resistance is my fear. What if my workshops go well? What if this really is my ultimate life purpose, the thing that I was put on this earth to do? This all sounds absolutely terrifying to me.

A good chunk of my fear comes from the fact that I’m doing something completely new for me. Even though I have run one workshop already, I am feeling an absolute metric shit ton of imposter syndrome. Yes, I have written for over a decade, and I’m a published author. I’ve even hosted a bunch of 12-step fellowship meetings, so I have a sense of how to hold space, run a Zoom meeting safely, and hopefully make the environment pleasant for people. But do I have what it takes to host a Sex Writing Workshop? Do I have enough expertise? This is far out beyond the edge of my comfort zone, where my self-doubt, perfectionism, and fear of failure have basically taken over. Holding intimate, transformative, and deeply personal spaces feels like a lot of responsibility.

Although I haven’t gotten as far as solving these sources of imposter syndrome yet, I encourage you to take the success you are afraid of and pick apart that fear. Sit with it. Journal about it. Feel it. Feel your heart pounding faster in your chest and your ears as your adrenaline climbs. That’s how you know that this situation, this conversation, or this decision you’re dealing with means something to you. You might not know how to solve it yet, but at least you know you’re alive. 

2.    Weigh up the cost of inaction.

As I was procrastinating last night, I stumbled across Tim Ferriss’s 2017 TED Talk. In it, he describes an exercise called “Fear Setting.” He says, 

“What we don’t often consider is the atrocious cost of the status quo, not changing anything. So, you should ask yourself: if I avoid this action or decision, and actions and decisions like this, what might my life look like in 3 months? 12 months? Three years?... And again, really get detailed, emotionally, financially, physically, whatever. And when I did this, it painted a terrifying picture…I realized that inaction was no longer an option for me…So I encourage you to ask yourselves: where in your life right now might defining your fears be more important than defining your goals?”

Let me tell you, I have a fear of change. I have worked really hard over the last two years to build my adult life exactly the way I want it, and I love it. So, the idea of defining my fears, going after them, and stepping into the unknown over something that might turn out to be terrible is frightening. 

But then I thought about what would happen if I stayed in this status quo. My image of inaction is that I never build a big enough platform or make enough money as a writer, so I have to go back to a boring data job that will crush my soul. I will probably be poor and not be able to afford to have a kid one day because hosting these workshops could be a decent source of income for me. Doing nothing would probably also make me super unhealthy (I used to drink more alcohol, weigh more, and eat a lot more unhealthy food when I lived in New York to cope with the stress of being stuck in a job I hated). So, all in all, I will probably be poorer and die earlier if I don’t host these workshops. If I don’t take this opportunity, I might never reach my full potential. All because I just wanted to stay comfortable. Seems pretty bleak, doesn’t it?

So, whatever your biggest fear is, write out a list of all the negative consequences you might experience from not taking any action to address it. All of a sudden, the thing that you’re afraid of will suddenly seem like the easier and less painful way to be alive. And it’s probably not as bad as you think it’s going to be. To finish his TED Talk, Tim quotes Seneca: 

“We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.” 

3.    Be open to unexpected benefits. 

If a bunch of people attend my workshops, I’m scared those people will have expectations of me. They’ll define me in a limited way from now on as the woman who teaches sex writing workshops. I’ll become a one-trick pony, and I’ll resent everyone and everything. Then, I’ll have to be accountable to other people. Side note: how do my idols like James Clear (the habits dude) and Dr. Kristin Neff (the self-compassion lady) or Esther Perel (the relationships woman) do it? Don’t they ever get bored of repeating themselves a billion times over? That sounds deathly boring to me, and that’s what I’m afraid will happen if I host these workshops.

Luckily, the beloved Julia Cameron experienced a very similar fear (although she has had very significant material success, as opposed to my success, which is still imaginary, lol). She talked about the fear that she experienced when she started teaching creative unblocking that formed the basis of The Artist’s Way:

“And I thought, oh, these tools are powerful…Groups began to spring up…I went to England, I was afraid. I thought, mistakenly, oh dear God, I’ll be trapped as a teacher! What I didn’t realize was that the teaching would actually empower me as an artist. That as I taught creative unblocking to people, I would become more and more unblocked. And so, it’s 40 books later.” 

Your vision of what success could mean for your life is most likely too narrow. Instead, success will open up new, expected pathways that you can’t anticipate right now.

Of course, this only makes sense if you really believe in what you are doing. I believe these workshops could be powerful and awesome as a way for people to explore their sexuality, so I have to dig my self-esteem out of the gutter, pull my self-efficacy out of thin air (i.e., the belief in myself that I can host a good workshop) and actually give it a shot.

4.    Embrace your light. 

One counterintuitive reason why I am not spreading the word about my workshop is that I’m overloaded with feelings of excitement. In fact, I’m worried that I’m overexcited. Part of me believes I need to level my emotions and be more realistic. I better squash my positive feelings now so that when things don’t work out for some reason, it won’t hurt me half as much later. This is a sad way to look at the world, and yet it’s the brain space I currently exist in. 

This is ultimately a mindset of scarcity: I don’t believe I deserve big things or nice things, so it makes more sense for me to self-sabotage and keep myself small so that I’m not disappointed later. This has resulted in me making excuses and diverting into more self-destructive behaviors: working too late on my client's projects, stressing myself out, drinking more alcohol than usual, and continuing with this micro-dosing protocol even though it’s messing with my mental health. My day-to-day productivity has collapsed because of all this.

And yet, this is helping me avoid facing my fear of marketing my workshops. I am slowly convincing myself this is how it’s supposed to be. I am underproductive. I am a low-functioning drunkard. I’m not able to pursue this project, even if it could help me with professional and personal growth. The negative beliefs and negative thought patterns spiral. Luckily, I’m doing CBT right now (cognitive behavioral therapy), so I’m trying to develop the self-awareness to address the root causes of my self-destructive behavior on my own. 

One long quote that I’ve discovered is a major antidote to this. From Marianne Williamson’s book “A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles"", it goes:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

In reality, I am comfortable with my life and the size of my readership as they are right now. I am afraid of shining brighter and messing up my comfortable well-being in the process. But I’m forgetting that we are not alone in our fear. We can witness each other’s fears and support each other in our journeys. But make no mistake: by liberating ourselves and getting over our fears, we also liberate others without even meaning to. And that is a beautiful thing.

Conclusion

Obtaining success means change. Change involves a surprising amount of loss: loss of what’s comfortable, loss of what’s familiar, and loss of our existing sense of safety.  But if any of us want to give our thing a try then change and all its unexpected consequences is something we are going to have to deal with. In my case, I believe hosting these workshops could be awesome, and maybe I shouldn’t just hide on the internet forever, publishing stories and avoiding all my other responsibilities. One framework for this comes from one of my favorite authors, Gretchen Rubin. When trying to make a tough decision, she simply says to herself, “Choose the bigger life.” 

I love that phrase. A quick reframe makes everything seem so simple. It puts things in perspective. So, yes, I am going to keep hosting my workshops and developing my expertise as a sex writing teacher because, for me, that could lead to a far richer, bigger, and greater life, even if I don’t feel prepared for what that might bring in the slightest right now. And if all else fails, I try to remember the words of Maya Angelou, which is the epigraph for my book and which I have quoted a thousand times over to try to maintain my moral integrity as a human being:

“Courage is the most important of all the virtues because, without courage, you can’t practice any other virtue consistently.”

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So, without further ado, my Paid Subscribers can find their 50% off access code for my Sex Writing Workshop below 🤭.