Fear of success is the biggest reason people fail, according to Internet marketing guru and coach Alex Jeffreys.
It starts as a subconscious feeling that causes people to sabotage themselves before they begin — without even realizing it, he said.
Here’s how it happens: Most people are afraid they won’t be able to hold up their promise, so they become paralyzed. It’s human nature to want to stay inside your comfort zone and not evolve as a person, he said.
“They’re scared they’re not perfect, so they don’t get started – but people don’t realize we have to fail to succeed,” he said.
As fear takes over, launching a new venture becomes too daunting, prompting a downward spiral. The person realizes they’re not achieving anything, so they’ll start to make excuses because they expect instant results without any effort, he said.
“They start pointing fingers, or they start to look inside and start to think, ‘I’m not worthy. Why me?’,” he said.
Too many people fail to realize that the only path to success comes after starting — and failing along the way. This is something Alex Jeffreys’ clients are told from the very beginning.
“People mistake the starting line with the finish line,” he said. “They will spend forever studying and getting ready for when they get started.”
Having a plan and being prepared to launch a new endeavor is important, but it becomes an issue when people get stuck in a loop of getting started and fail to move forward, he said.
“You can’t learn to ride a bike going to a seminar,” Jeffreys said. “You have to make those mistakes and failures.”
Learning from his mistakes has been a crucial element of Jeffreys’ career success. In the early stages of his career, he said he was overly optimistic about what he could accomplish in a single sprint and had difficulties learning how to manage his time.
“I wouldn’t work on the main tasks first based on fear because I was scared of success,” he said. Instead, he wasted time procrastinating and performing inconsequential tasks. Because he was keeping busy, he told himself he was accomplishing something.
These stumbles turned into procrastination, which slowed him from making real progress. After some time, he realized all of these stumbling blocks had one thing in common — fear of success, he said.
“I mistook activity with accomplishment,” he said. “I was a busy fool.”
People think once they do all of this work and preparation, success will just appear and they’ll be ready to earn easily like casino free money. That’s not how it works, Jeffreys said.
Success is an ongoing phenomenon that takes a lifetime to get used to, and the subsequent adrenaline rush can be triggering to anyone who has dealt with a traumatic experience, Jeffreys said. The emotional rollercoaster can prompt people to retract from success and “bury their heads in the sand” he said.
As the adrenaline rush and problems fade away, so do the clients. Eventually, there are no clients left, and you’re back to your comfort zone. Success comes from pushing yourself leaving your comfort zone, he said.
“Business is not natural – it’s like two magnets going together – it repels you,” he said. “You have to go through that magnetic field to push through it. Everything will try to stop it.”
About Carson Derrow
