Hello! Seiiti Arata. Last week our video was about how the fear of failure can stifle our creativity. Today we will see the opposite: our fear of success can also limit our creative potential. It’s like driving with the handbrake on all the time.
1. There are great advantages to enabling your creativity.
Before we talk about the fear of success, let’s discuss the rationale behind it. Any kind of fear is giving us some alert; it’s trying to achieve a greater good, such as our security.
So before we talk about fears, we must first identify the real benefits we seek.
And the greatest rewards that you will find—both in your personal life and your professional life—will emerge from CREATIVE EXPERIENCES, exploring unusual ideas.
Creativity is a bold exploration of different ideas.
It is natural that some of these adventures end up unfolding in frustration. Not everything we try works. But only with these experiences can we discover great treasures.
2. We are afraid to raise expectations.
Imagine that today I get an exceptional result. And then? Will I keep repeating the same performance? What if I return to my previous level? Will it haunt me that I never achieve the same success?
By using our creativity and talent, we can increase future expectations of us. We’re raising the bar. We fear that we can’t achieve a positive result now, or if we do, it may not be possible to replicate this success in the future. We do not want to deal with the consequences of success.
After writing the best-selling book, Eat, Pray, Love, author Elizabeth Gilbert knew she would be in a very uncomfortable position. How she could write another book without disappointing all the fans of this blockbuster? Fear of success told her that she would never produce another work of the same quality.
She knew she could not overcome. She considered abandoning her career as a writer. She was out of the comfort zone.
3. Define your purpose clearly.
What was Elizabeth Gilbert’s solution? She set out to rescue her sense of purpose. We are here to do what we love, and to love what we do. When you do something with all your energy, with absolute devotion, its success or failure are irrelevant—a mere detail.
And for her it meant writing. That’s how she overcame the fear of success. She considers that some of her newer books were disasters, and others were successful. In both situations, it was fine. She wrote not seeking a certain result, she wrote because she is driven to write. So the best thing to overcome fear of success is to understand what you want to create, and what is driving you to create it.
Understand the purpose. What do you want to achieve? Why is this important? What solutions already exist? Are the existing solutions are inappropriate or inadequate? What can you do differently? Why does it matter? What difference will it make to do what everyone else does, or to be creative?
You can improve your ability to produce good ideas consistently if you understand the purpose behind your creative process.
The stronger your motivation, the more likely you will achieve high levels of creativity. In my case, creativity is manifested in full form when I’m developing a course that is not only interesting to me, but I also know I have the ability to help many people. When our motivation goes beyond self-interest, the value of what we do takes on a new dimension. See our Episode 07 on how to find your purpose: http://arata.se/hello07
4. You will only find the next door after opening the first.
An additional tip to sustain the intensity of your creativity: do not set the boundaries of your purpose very rigidly. It is difficult to have the whole vision at the beginning. Often you will find out what direction you want to follow only after you’ve started.
Do not get stuck inside the box you created. The purpose is only an approximate direction for your next step. Along the way, you can determine if you are moving in the right direction and make the necessary adjustments.
One more tip: in some professional environments, if your creativity stands out, it may invite the envy and resentment of other colleagues. They may think you are making them look mediocre. Maybe they call you over and suggest that you slow down, otherwise everyone will have to work like you. Unfortunately, this happens in many environments with a corporate culture of mediocrity. If you find this subject interesting, I can record a specific video, but for those who are dealing with this kind of difficulty at work, I recommend doing our Double Your Salary course, because there we train you to deal with the fear of success within the professional environment.
Stay tuned, for fear of success can often be worse than the fear of failure. Fear of success can come with the false appearance of wisdom and humility. In fact, the fear of success can make you lose valuable opportunities.
Are you limiting your creative potential because you can’t account for the success ahead? Do you fear the consequences? Perhaps you do not feel worthy of success.
To take the off the hand brake and move with full power into your professional career, I invite you to consider our course, Double Your Salary, by visiting the link http://arata.se/dys.