166. Overcoming Your Fear of Success

My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.

Hey there, and welcome to Episode 166, of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, overcoming your fear of success. Fear of success is something that most people probably aren’t aware of. If you ask people why they can’t seem to reach a particular goal, they’ll probably come up with all kinds of reasons and excuses and stories and such. And they’ll probably almost never say, oh, fear of success. That’s why I couldn’t reach my goal.

But here’s the thing, fear of success is a real thing. And today, I want to bring this into your understanding. I want you to become keenly aware of this natural fear of success that we all have, what it looks like, so that you’ll never have to fall prey to that again in the future. So in this episode, I’ll explain what fear of success is, and how overcoming your fear of success can be the key to achieving your weight loss goals.

But first, when I start working with someone, and they tell me they have a sweet tooth, I’m using finger quotes here sweet tooth. And they cannot imagine living their life without sweets without sugar. So here’s what we do, I suggest they take a break from sugar for a while. And that suggestion usually makes them freak out a little bit. Their cravings for sugar typically go up right away, like if you stop eating sugar, or if you let’s say you stop drinking alcohol, like the first thing that’s going to happen is that your cravings are going to probably go up a little bit.

Okay, but then we work through that and we deal with that. And then something interesting happens after a few days. without sugar, those cravings start to subside a little bit. After a few weeks, the cravings get a lot weaker and more sporadic. So they’re not happening constantly.
And then after a few months without sugar, the cravings are often completely gone. Not always.

But a lot of times, it’s just not an issue anymore. So sugar was something that they couldn’t imagine living without, oh, I have a sweet tooth, I just have to eat sugar all the time. And now it’s something that they don’t care about anymore. They don’t ever want it back in their lives. They feel better without it, they sleep better. They have more energy, and running is easier. They’re losing weight.

So if this is you, if you don’t think you could ever give up sugar, I want you to challenge that thought. Just challenge the thought, what if What if you’re wrong? Because here’s what I think – I think you can do it. I think you can do it. You just need the right guidance, the support and the encouragement to get you there. And I can help you with all that.

Okay, if you want to learn more and apply for coaching, just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply. We’ll get on call, we’ll talk about it, we’ll see how coaching can help you overcome your quote unquote, sweet tooth. Cool. Awesome.

All right, let’s talk about overcoming your fear of success. And I have been thinking about this episode for a while because it is a concept that I talk to someone about, typically every week, every week, this comes up in one way or another. And it’s something that we have to work through.

So I thought since it’s so prevalent out there, that I thought I would really bring this into the spotlight today and really shine a light on what fear of success is but I think we all experienced this to some degree. And as I go through this conversation today, I think you’re gonna see that you can relate to a lot of this and you may not be aware that you’re doing it or why you’re doing it, but let’s, let’s just get into this.

Let’s start with an understanding of what fear of success is. So fear of success is when you have an ongoing fear of reaching some goal or of accomplishing something and it’s usually something big like you know, losing a lot of weight. That’s that’s a big let’s say you got to lose 30 pounds 50 pounds. That can seem pretty daunting.

So fear of success is having a fear of reaching that goal. And the fear is very real. And it’s also mostly unconscious or subconscious. Meaning that you may not be consciously aware that you have this fear, but it’s there. And it’s real nonetheless. And it’s not that you aren’t capable of reaching your goal, you definitely are, you are capable of losing the 30 pounds or 50 pounds.

But there’s an underlying fear of what comes along with reaching that big goal, the change that happens when you reach a big goal like that, and you’re not so sure that you’re going to be able to handle it. That’s where a lot of this fear stems from. Let’s talk about the underlying issue here, the real root cause of this fear of success. The fear of success is your brain trying to keep you safe and comfortable.

So we have two main different aspects of our brain, there’s more than two, but there’s two I’m going to talk about today, we have our amygdala, our primitive brain, and we have our prefrontal frontal cortex, which is our more modern, that’s more of our thinking brain, our prefrontal cortex is the part of our brain we use for planning for making good decisions for being organized.

And so this is our modern evolved part of our brain, the amygdala, is a tiny little almond size, part of our brain, one of the most primitive parts of our brain that is responsible for fight or flight for fear for those criminal primal urges that we have, you know, survival and sex drive and things like that.

So we have this thinking, planning, you know, organized brain, and then we have this primitive, fear driven brain, and they’re always kind of at odds with each other to some degree, right? That amygdala, so that lizard brain, I’ll call it right, is always just seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. And this is a very powerful part of our brain, that amygdala drives a lot of our decision making and drives a lot of our behavior.

And it’s up to us using the prefrontal cortex to override that default behavior. So that primitive part of our brain will be seeking pleasure and avoiding pain, it’s seeking comfort and avoiding discomfort, it’s seeking the familiar and avoiding anything that feels unfamiliar. So reaching a big goal, you know, losing a bunch of weight, or, you know, achieving success in other areas of our life.

This seems like it would create pleasure for us, right? And our prefrontal cortex, we say, Yes, this is what I want for myself, this will bring me joy and pleasure and make me happy. But to your brain, this is just another uncomfortable place for you. This is you getting into unfamiliar territory, your natural inclination is to avoid anything that causes fear and worry and anxiety, and discomfort.

And succeeding at something like losing a bunch of weight can create all those things, it can create fear, anxiety and worry and discomfort. So a good example of this is something that I see, probably once a week, I talk to somebody about this, in my coaching practice, someone has a big weight loss goal, and they might be getting close to some big number. So it could be breaking 200 pounds.

So there, there may be, you know, they started at 225 or 230, and they want to get, you know, down to 190 or something like that, and they’re getting close to that 200 pound mark, they might be at 205 or something. And, or it could be someone who’s, you know, trying to break through some other number, like another milestone number, like 150, you know, maybe it’s someone who’s trying to get down to one 140. And, you know, 145 and they’re like 155, and they haven’t been under 150 in decades, you know, okay, so they’re getting close to this number.

And let’s just use the 200 pound number and so we have somebody that’s getting close, so maybe they got really close, they’d been at two, two and two, a one and maybe they even dipped down below 200 And got to like 199 for a day. And then they find themselves moving in the other direction they got to, then they go back to 201 and 203 and 205.

And they don’t understand it. How can this be happening? I just got right below that number that I was working so hard to get to. I was starting to understand, why couldn’t I stay there? So then we dig into the details, we look at their food logs, and then we see a few things that become pretty clear.

Oh, yeah, well, I forgot that I ate that piece of cake. And I ate that medium sized pizza by myself. And while I ate a bunch of my kids’ french fries and ate all this bread with dinner, and I did have a few beers or a couple bottles of wine or whatever it is, right? And they’re not even aware that they’re doing these things.

But they’re sabotaging their own success in the process, right? So their brain is basically just saying, like, getting under 199 feels uncomfortable. So we’re not going to go there. We’re going to keep you up here at like 203-205. Like, this feels pretty good. We haven’t been under 200 in the 100’s for like 20 years. So this is dangerous territory we’re getting into here. This is unfamiliar and uncomfortable.

So your brain will actively try to move you in the other direction. It’s not that this is what you want for yourself, not consciously anyway. But unconsciously your brain is sensing danger, and sensing discomfort and sensing fear and will move you in the other direction. This is classic self sabotage. This is how fear of success manifests itself. In a lot of people.

Okay, this is one example. So we have to be aware of this. And we have to actively work against our brain’s natural tendencies, that means being willing to get uncomfortable. That means noticing, when you are actively seeking comfort and safety and keep going anyway, keep doing your thing anyway.

Even though it feels uncomfortable, and unsafe, and unfamiliar, be willing to be uncomfortable, embrace the suck. Because that’s how you actually achieve anything that you want and everything that you want for yourself. So there are some other signs that you might be experiencing fear of success. And one of those is maybe you don’t have goals, because you lack goals or your goals are very low and very easy to reach.

So keeping the bar low, means you don’t ever have to face any real challenges. You never have to get too uncomfortable. So if you don’t strive for much, it won’t really matter if you reach that goal or not. Because you haven’t put much into it. So many people do this. I talk to people all the time, what’s your weight loss goal? And they’ll say, oh, you know, I want to lose 10 pounds, or they’ll say something small like that.

And I’ll push them a little bit and you know, really dig into it and kind of find out where they really want to be and what their ideal weight is. Let’s say you could wave a magic wand today. Where do you want to be, really? And they’ll be like well, I mean, I really want to lose like 30 pounds.

Okay, so why aren’t you shooting for 30 pounds as your goal? Well, because it seems hard. That’s not realistic. What if I fail, or I’ve tried that before, and I’ve let myself down? I’ve never been able to do it before. And in light of this discussion to say today, I just want to say like what, what if, what if I succeed, I’m going to be a whole new person. And that brings up a whole host of uncomfortable thoughts and feelings about who I’m going to be.

That’s really what’s going on here. What happens if you succeed? So understand that we can self sabotage and we can keep ourselves small, because we are afraid of succeeding. So we we don’t have big goals. We keep our goals very low. Oh, what’s your big running goal this year? Oh, I want to run? You know, a 5k. Well, why not go for more? What do you really want to do? Well, I mean, I’d love to run a marathon someday, but I mean, that’s not in the stars for me. I could never do something like that.

Like no, we’re gonna do that. We’re gonna do that thing that you think is impossible. Forget realistic, I hate those smart goals that are like they’re, they’re you know, “realistic” goals, and I’m like, no, let’s go for unrealistic goals. Okay, so lack of goals are low goals, easily attainable goals. This could be a sign that you’re experiencing fear of success.

Another sign is procrastination. So you keep stalling and stalling until you just don’t ever do anything. Right, a lot of times people will stall and then the opposite opportunity will actually pass them by. And they’ll be like, well see, I mean, it just wasn’t meant to be. But then you know, you never really have to take action if you just keep putting things off. So you never have to worry about failing or succeeding.

And one of the biggest reasons why people do not achieve what they want for themselves. The biggest reason why people don’t achieve their goals and their dreams is procrastination. They say, I’ll do it later, I’ll do it. When I have more time, I’ll do it when I have more money, I’ll do it when the kids are off to college, or when we pay the house off, or after I retire. Or once this big project is over at work or whatever, on and on, and on, and on and on.

Later, I’ll do it later. Later, later, later, is the number one killer of hopes and dreams. Because later never happens. There will always be some excuse, some reason or some story about why you need to wait or why you should put it off. If you want to make a big change in your life right now, stop doing this. Stop saying later, start taking action, not this week. Not later today, right now do something right now, to move towards that goal, whatever it is that you want for yourself. There’s something you can do, right now.

Another reason why people will have this fear of success, and you’ll see it manifest in this way, is perfectionism. So people will say to themselves, hey, if I can’t do it perfectly, why should I bother doing it at all? And I think this is on one hand, hilarious, and on the other hand, insidious, because it’s funny to me, because nobody does anything perfectly right?

No, we don’t ever do anything perfectly. But we hold ourselves to this high standard that if we aren’t perfect, there’s no reason why we should even bother doing it. And it’s kind of insidious, because it keeps us from achieving anything. This is one of the reasons why people won’t start something or they try something for a minute and they quit because they don’t do it perfectly. Or maybe they fail.

But you know what the real key here is, isn’t doing something perfectly. It’s about being consistent about what you’re doing. Consistency beats perfection all the time. So instead of thinking about and striving for perfection, think about and strive to be consistent in whatever it is you’re doing. Maybe you have a goal to run regularly. And your goal is to run five days a week. And you do that pretty well for a few weeks. And then you miss a day.

Instead of saying, “Well, you know, I screwed up, I guess I can’t do this though”, you just keep going. Or if you have a new food plan, you’re trying to not eat sugar. And then, you know, over the weekend you kind of gave in and your kids were having a little birthday party for their friend and they had cupcakes and you had a cupcake. “Well, I didn’t do it perfectly. So I might as well just eat the rest of the cupcakes. Screw these little kids. I’m gonna eat all their cupcakes.”

No, don’t do that. First of all, that’s not cool. Kids want the cupcakes, right? Let the kids eat the cupcakes. But for you, it doesn’t mean you’re a failure. Just stop eating the cupcakes, just whatever, you ate one, fine, move on. We don’t have to. But you know, we don’t have two cheat meals in a row. We don’t miss two workouts in a row. That’s a good rule of thumb right there. Okay, so forget perfectionism. Strive for consistency. instead.

Another sign that you might be experiencing this fear of success is quitting. Why did you quit? And a lot of people will quit just before they reach some goal or some milestone, like the example of somebody that’s trying to lose weight and they’re, you know, they get to 203 or 204. And they just quit.

Because getting close to that goal, it starts to become real, it starts to feel uncomfortable. And they start worrying about all kinds of stuff. Why they won’t be able to maintain that going forward or, or what are people going to think of them and I’ll get into all that in just a minute. But people will quit, rather than experience the discomfort that comes along with succeeding. I know it’s bananas, right?

And the last sign that you might be experiencing a fear of success is any kind of self sabotaging behavior which we’ve been talking about any kind of self destructive behavior. So doing things that go against what you’re actively trying to achieve. Self sabotaging behavior is any behavior that you engage in, that is not in alignment with your goals. It’s things you do that aren’t aligned with who you want to be. It’s pretty simple. Is this thing I’m doing right now in alignment with who I ultimately want to be as a human being? Pretty easy answer, just like yes or no?

If the answer is yes, do it. If the answer is no, don’t do it. Pretty simple. Should I eat the cupcake? Oh, is that in alignment with who you want to be? No, well, I don’t need it. Pretty simple.

So why do we do all this? There are many reasons why we fear success, as counterintuitive as it seems. So I want to dive into some of the reasons why we actually do these things. Okay. So one of them is that you might be afraid of being the center of attention. So succeeding, losing a lot of weight means that people might start to notice you. So you might be afraid of people noticing you or you might be afraid of being in the spotlight, people might start complimenting you on how good you look.

And consciously you might, you might say, oh, I want that. But subconsciously, you’re like, I don’t want that. I don’t want anybody to notice me, I don’t want people to notice how much weight I’ve lost. Because this can feel very uncomfortable. This is not something that you’re used to, you’re used to hiding in this body where nobody really paid attention to you. Nobody really saw you.

And now you start to feel exposed because people are noticing you. And this can be very uncomfortable. Okay? Notice when this is happening, notice when you’re actively being afraid of being the center of attention. Okay? Another reason why we do this is that we worry about leaving people behind, if we move forward. So if we succeed at something, we worry about, leaving others behind, so has your husband, or your friends will say things to you, like, Hey, you look fine, you don’t need to lose any more weight.

And so as you lose weight, you start to feel like you’re pulling away from those people. And you start to feel like there’s this rift between you because they’re telling you, oh, don’t lose more weight, you know, you look fine. And they’re doing that, because what you’re doing makes them feel uncomfortable. It’s not about you, it’s about them. So instead of continuing on, you begin to self sabotage your own success, so you don’t lose your friends. So you don’t lose your partner.

And of course, it’ll probably never happen. But it’s hitting on that tribal nerve, that part of us that just wants to be a part of that wants to fit in and wants to be a part of the group. And there’s this quote that the nail that sticks out gets hammered down, right. And instinctively, we don’t want to stand out, we don’t want to get hammered down, we just want to be like everybody else around us.

But here’s the truth bomb, you may have to leave some people behind. If the people around you don’t support you, if the people around you are trying to hold you back from being your best self, because it makes them feel uncomfortable. It makes them feel bad about themselves. You might need to find new people, or at least have a conversation with some of these people, especially your partner.

You don’t need to get divorced over this, right? But it’s not out of the realm of possibility. So I’m just saying. All right. Another reason why we fear success is that we start to feel anxious about being able to maintain that success. So we say things like, oh, it’s kind of hard work to lose weight, right? Am I going to have to work this hard the rest of my life?

And this is where we stop being afraid of reaching a goal and start being afraid of being able to maintain that goal. The truth though, is that it’s actually much easier to maintain your weight than it is to lose weight. So to lose weight, there’s some restriction there, you have to be a little bit more strict about what you’re doing if you want to lose weight, much more so than to maintain weight.

But most people what happens is they tend to fall back into old habits once they hit a weight loss goal. So they never really learned how to maintain their weight. They never learned the habits to make all this sustainable. And one of the most important things I do as a coach is help you to learn how to make eating right and maintaining a healthy weight just part of who you are part of what you do.

It has to be easy, it has to be effortless. Maintaining your weight has to be an ingrained habit. And inevitably that’s where we’re trying to get with all this but a lot of people don’t see it that way. They don’t understand how to make it sustainable, they feel like they have to be too restrictive, to lose weight and they think that they have to be that restrictive forever and you really don’t.

But, you know, thinking about maintaining your success thinking about maintaining your weight can be enough to cause people to quit and to start self sabotaging, okay. Another reason why people fear success is there’s this fear of being judged. And criticized, especially by the people that are close to you.

We sometimes feel like we get judged, criticized, shunned by friends and family. Sometimes it’s just strangers on the internet, or whatever. But this can be, this can be very uncomfortable. And so you might have a whole new look like you lost a bunch of weight, you got new clothes, you get super fit, you feel amazing, you look fabulous.

And yet, there will be people out there who do not like you. And they’ll let you know that. They don’t like that you’ve changed. They don’t like your new look, they don’t like your new clothes, they don’t like that you’re into running or whatever it is, they just don’t like you period, right? Here’s the thing, though, this is just part of being a human being here on planet Earth. Some people like you, and some people won’t.

And that’s it, get over it. Do not let your fear of being judged or criticized stop you from becoming your most badass self. Because the reality is, there are probably already people right now who don’t like you for who you are at this moment. So you might as well just ignore everybody, all the haters out there, and just you do you you become the person that you ultimately want to become.

And don’t let any of that nonsense stop you. Okay? So all the stuff we’re talking about today is about awareness. It’s about having the insight and the self awareness to notice when your fear of success might actually be the fortune of your success. So once you understand all this, you see that it is happening. And a lot of times remember this is a lot of this is subconscious, right.

But once you see that it is happening. Once you bring it into your awareness into your consciousness, you can do something about it. You have to notice when your behavior might not be in alignment with who you want to be, and then work to change it. Be mindful when you start using excuses and reasons and stories to justify some sort of unwanted behavior. Oh, man, I’ve been really good all week. So I deserve a pizza as a reward. Oh, this might be a little fear of success. Do I really want to undo all the hard work I’ve done up to this point for a few pieces of mediocre pizza? No, I don’t.

So be aware of when you try to tell yourself, it’s okay to do it. There’s just one piece of pizza or whatever. When you know that that’s really not what you want for yourself. Okay. Lastly, I just want you to be willing to be uncomfortable because this process of succeeding or achieving weight loss goals or whatever your goals are is its own comfort.

Discomfort is the price you pay to achieve all your goals and dreams. Discomfort is the cost of your success. Just gotta remember that. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean, and I will talk to you soon.

If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.