{"id":537,"date":"2017-05-28T17:03:00","date_gmt":"2017-05-28T17:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/katrina.effexhost.com\/index.php\/2017\/05\/28\/fearing-success\/"},"modified":"2017-05-28T17:03:00","modified_gmt":"2017-05-28T17:03:00","slug":"fearing-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifewithkatie.com\/index.php\/2017\/05\/28\/fearing-success\/","title":{"rendered":"Fearing Success"},"content":{"rendered":"
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“People who have experienced trauma may associate the excitement of success with the same physiological reactions as trauma. They avoid subjecting themselves to excitement-inducing circumstances, which causes them to be almost phobic about success.” — Psychology Today<\/p>\n

“The Jonah complex is the fear of success which prevents self-actualization or the realization of one’s potential. It is the fear of one’s own greatness, the evasion of one’s destiny, or the avoidance of exercising one’s talents. Just as the fear of achieving a personal worst can motivate personal growth, the fear of achieving a personal best can also hinder achievement.” — Wikipedia<\/p>\n

Yesterday, I wrote a post about finding myself and in it, I mentioned how I’m the only thing standing in my way of so many things. Today, I woke up absolutely exhausted and immediately went into beat myself up\/I’m worthless mode. I sat here feeling sorry for myself. There’s no other words to describe it. When my body\/brain says you need a down day, I get incredibly frustrated and I take it out on myself. A lot of us do that. We beat ourselves up over things that are outside of our control.<\/p>\n

I’d love to tell you that I meditated or came to some brilliant conclusion that brought me here today, but the reality is that I noticed that I had Pinterest open in a tab so I decided to lazy scroll through things and see what I found. What I found was a whole lot of pins on writing and it reminded me of yesterday’s post so here I am…after pinning about a dozen of them to go back to later.<\/p>\n

If you know me well at all, you know that I write. I write stories, I write posts, I write diary entries in Word that may or may not ever be seen by the world. I write. It’s what I do. It’s what I’ve done for as long as I remember. It’s what I want to do with my life. I want to write.<\/p>\n

Seems easy enough, right? If someone said to me that they wanted to write, I’d say, “Then write.” Except it’s not that simple. Okay, the writing part is. Writing isn’t difficult for me. Heck, hand me a notebook and a pen and I’ll doodle and write all day long. It’s the part that comes after that…what do I do with it once I write it? Do I file it away somewhere? Do I publish it? Do I tell anyone about it?<\/p>\n

Just a few days ago, I got the Facebook notification that on this day a year ago, I published my first story on Amazon<\/a>. I’ve gone on to publish something like 8 stories. In that year, I’ve never made enough off selling them to even receive a royalty payment. Why? Because I’ve been afraid to take the next steps. I have the resources. Russell Nohelty has a podcast<\/a> all about building up your creative business. I’m part of at least one really good authors’ group<\/a> on Facebook. I’m friends (or at least Facebook friends) with multiple published writers.<\/p>\n

So what’s holding me back? Me. I am. I’m the problem. I’m terrified of what happens if I do this and I do it well. What will that mean for my life? What changes will there be? Just thinking about it has my anxiety flaring up. Then, there’s the other side of it. I look around at the people surrounding me and I think “What’s the point in even trying? There are so many people out there already doing this. There’s nothing special about me or what I do.”<\/p>\n

I’m afraid of success and I’m afraid of failure. So, I do nothing. I write my stories and sometimes I post them and sometimes I don’t. I write here and since it’s mostly ignored by the outside world, I tell myself that it’s a sure sign that my writing isn’t any good. If it were, surely something I’d written would have gained traction by now. Is that the truth? Probably not. There are a million people out there writing the same  types of things on their blogs. There’s no reason that mine would gain attention.<\/p>\n

Still, I write because I can’t imagine a life without doing it. This is part of me. I just have to decide if I’m brave enough to really show people what I can do and if I am, I have to start taking those steps. I know that I’m not alone in feeling like this and I hope that I’m not alone in whatever happens next.<\/p>\n

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