Fear of Success
Podcast
Episode:
Fear of Success
by Danielle Searancke
When I first heard this phrase, Fear of Success, it was a lightbulb moment for me. A lot of what you hear today is my personal lived experiences because I teach through experiential storytelling. I find that those who are drawn to listen to specific episodes will hear something through my experiences that really resonates and lands. Hopefully, that will spark and ignite change in your lives. That's why I do what I do.
Fear has ruled my life for so long. I'm going to be 40 years old next month, and I feel like I'm still coming into my adulthood. A lot of people probably feel the same. It's the cusp between who you were, and who you are to become. It feels like destiny territory!
Episode:
Fear of Success
Spirit School Podcast
SOME HIGHLIGHTS FROM THIS EPISODE INCLUDE:
Innovation requires you to try new things and fail, so it is not a bad thing.
I do have a fear of success, which is imposter syndrome or success anxiety.
I want to reclaim the word power to a feminine and expansive term.
Shame, perfectionism and procrastination prevent people from the vulnerability of trying .
Get clear on what success looks, sounds, and feels like to you individually.
Celebrating success when it comes in is part of the healing journey.
Healing doesn’t happen overnight, and we need awareness around it first.
Try this mindset shift: What if it all turns out amazing?
LINKS
Join us on the new FREE Spirit School platform: https://myspiritschoolcollective.com/plans/
If you want to join the Spirit School Collective at the same time, choose the Spirit School Collective plan: https://myspiritschoolcollective.com/plans/
Enjoy the Show?
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Fear of Success
Hello, Spirit School listeners. Welcome to another podcast episode, this one titled Fear of Success. When I first heard this phrase, it was one of those mic drop, light bulb moments for me. You guys know I share through experiences, right? This is how we rock it here at Spirit School. It might sound like I'm talking about myself constantly, but how I teach is through storytelling, more than that, experiential storytelling.
Personal Experiences with a Fear of Success
So a lot of what you're gonna hear today are my personal lived experiences on this topic of fear of success. And what I find happens is those that are drawn to listen to specific episodes, or even just find me randomly in the podcast sphere, you will hear something, through my experiences, that really resonates and lands with you. And then hopefully that awareness will spark and ignite big change in your lives.
Turning 40 and the North Node in Astrology
So, what I wanna say around this is when I first heard it, it was a big epiphany moment for me. I speak about this a lot on my podcast, how fear has really ruled my life for so much of my life. You know, I'm gonna be 40 years old next month, and so I'm still really coming into my adulthood, I feel, in a lot of ways. And I think a lot of people who approach 40 probably feel the same. It's like that kind of cusp between who you were and who you are to become, especially if we look at like astrology. They say you really enter that north node territory around 40. And that's kind of like destiny territory. So up until 40, we're really experimenting, like figuring out who we are, what we stand for, what we're passionate about. And then after 40, according to astrology, is when we enter north node territory, our destiny, all that fun stuff.
Fear at the Root of Decision Making
So, me looking back at the first 40 years of my life, though my life has always been like this, there has been fear at the root of a lot of my decisions, a lot of the things that I have chosen not to do in my life, but I can recognize that I never had a fear of failure. Even as a little kid, I was like a super entrepreneur spirit. I would just go knock on neighbor's doors and be like, how can I earn money today off you? I need subway cookies and Freddie Kruger movies. Like how can I earn money off you right now? And I was a very confident child in a lot of ways.
Fear of Failure and Innovation
So, you know, I eloped with a stranger when I was a kid. I moved to a town I'd never heard of. I have launched so many things in my business that no one has purchased and I continue to create new things constantly that people either love or they don't resonate with, and I'm totally okay with that. And so I can recognize on my path that fear of failure is like not a thing for me. It just isn't. I'm super happy experimenting. And I think too, society as a whole, we are coming to terms that failure is not a bad thing.
When I used to work in human resources in the corporate world, I got to do a lot of research about adult learning. It was a really chaotic job for me, but I did learn quite a bit. And I was fascinated to find that down in Silicon Valley, a lot of the big tech companies actually ask their employees to indicate failures on their annual plans, for their careers, because the thought is that if you are not trying for something new at the risk of failing, you're not really innovating. And I think that innovation is something that isn't spoken about enough.
Innovation in Mediumship Development Spaces
And it's kind of how I feel I land in the mediumship space, is a little bit more innovative approaches to mediumship. Like I'm really obsessed right now figuring out how mediumship works for people with like neurodivergency, or like ADHD, or there are some conditions where people actually can't visualize and I am certain that mediumship is accessible to all. So I've been playing and trying to innovate around how can I make the mediumship space more inclusive and more accessible to people of truly all walks of life And so, that requires a lot of innovating. So I'm not gonna get it right every single time, but I am not afraid to try, and I'm not afraid to experiment, and I'm not afraid to fail.
Fear of Failure vs. Fear or Success
But what I have noticed and recognize, especially since I started developing as a medium in 2013, I definitely have a fear of success. And there's a lot of different reasons for that. And that's kind of what this episode is gonna be about. What is a fear of success? A fear of success is imposter syndrome, and more commonly known as success anxiety, or success phobia. And really, it's about dimming your light and staying small, because we really don't know what's on the other side of being successful, right.
Lived Examples of Success in the Real World
Because for a lot of us, and this is my case very much, there's not a lot of people I know in my real life, or even in my industry, I can say with honesty, that demonstrate a level of success or a use of their success in a way that I would want to achieve or replicate or progress towards. So I don't actually have very many lived examples who have the level of success that I feel like I desire. It looks very different and I don't wanna use levels as in its like hierarchies, better or worse. It's just different. I think what I'm trying to achieve maybe hasn't been done before, or maybe it's just not in my awareness yet, somebody who is doing something similar. I just don't know.
Misuse of Power in Spiritual Development Spaces
But for me, that fear of success really is rooted in seeing throughout my career, people misusing their influence and power, which you know, is what comes by way of success. You get influence with success. And I use power because influence is powerful. And I want to really claim back the word power, away from the way it has been used in patriarchy. I really wanna reclaim that language around power because in mediumship we're tuning into our power and the power around us and we build our power. And I think that power is actually quite beautiful. When I speak about power, to give you a bit of context, it's in this very feminine space, and a very expansive space, not how we see it being used by society and white men. And there's nothing against white men, but you know what I mean? Like just that patriarchal structures that we have seen when we think of certain people who demonstrate, and I'm putting air quotes here, power.
How Fear of Success Shows Up For Me
So I wanna talk a little bit about how this fear of success has shown up for me, and how this may show up for you. If this is something that you know, you also have. So what will happen is we will rarely expand ourselves. We will miss opportunity, or we will turn away opportunities to be seen at a higher and more visible level. So we stick with doing what's comfortable. For me, I sabotaged a TV spot. I sabotaged the opportunity to speak in front of a membership that had over a thousand people. Every time I have been placed, in the past year and a half, with an opportunity to get more exposure, I have gone out to sabotage it.
Staying in Your Comfort Zone
You'll just stick with what's comfortable and this complacency, which is very different than contentment. I think complacency and contentment are two opposing and complete opposite energies, though they kind of mean the same thing. They're very different energetically. So we become very complacent and we rarely expand ourselves. We'll avoid opportunities to be seen and heard, like the examples I just gave you.
Shrinking Down to Feel Safe
Another thing that I do, which definitely comes up around my fear of success, that I know a lot of other people do because I hear it in my students as well, is devaluing yourself to appear to be less special. Shrinking down really intelligent women. I've seen this happen in the corporate space, too. People will dumb down their intelligence to try to fit in or feel safe in a space with people who may not have that emotional intelligence. And so this happens in a lot of different areas of our life.
Learning to Receive Compliments
I know for me personally, I'm getting better, but I receive a lot of love from my audience, and I appreciate it so much, but I'm learning to like really truly receive it because my default is always, oh, anyone can do this. And like, I'm not that sparkly. I'm not that amazing. You're amazing too. And I really try to like deflect and devalue my magnificence. I do this even when people like compliment my clothes. If somebody says, oh my God, I love your shirt. And I'm like, oh my God, this is just Walmart. And I'm like devaluing and trying to like dim and stay small, even in the most simplest of interactions, because there is a resistance, and I'll get to that coming up, to being seen as amazing, successful. It's all tied together. It all links together.
The next thing has like really plagued me. And I actually recorded this podcast episode yesterday and I am rerecording it just because of this experience. Okay. So again, being very vulnerable with you guys, I'm super vulnerable with you guys. You know that about me. There's no other way I know how to be. People are always like, oh, you're so vulnerable. I'm like, I'm just spitting facts. I'm just spitting the facts of my life. And to me it doesn't feel incredibly vulnerable, but I do know that based off of three years of podcasting, that this is how you guys learn best. So we're just gonna stick to it.
Feeling Like a Small Kid at a Big Table
But the truth is, one of the ways that my fear of success shows up in my life is I constantly feel like the small kid at the big table. So you think about your family Christmas dinners. They have the kids' table and like the adults' table. It's like that weird transition feeling when you're too big for the kids' table, but you're too small for the adult table. Right. That analogy, that's me. That's how I literally feel walking through life, so much. And that is not how you guys see me. There has always been a disconnect for me, and I've talked about this all three years on my podcast, and I promise you I will get it in life. Not like I owe it to you, I owe it to myself, but I will get this in my life. I know that I will. I can feel so much growth with it, but I still have a bit of a way to go.
And I remember years ago, in 2019, I was gifted a humongous Indigenous entrepreneurs grant. I didn't even meet the qualifications for it. And they loved me and they were like, yes, we wanna invest in you. And I remember crying, and thinking, what do people see in me I just don't see in myself? And it's tied to feeling like the small kid at the big table.
Experiences in Pitching Ads for the Podcast
An example from yesterday, I wanted to pitch one of my favorite companies, to see if they wanted to pay to be mentioned on my podcast. Now, I get asked all the time by companies, like at least a couple times a month. I have different companies reach out to me like if you mention our podcasting platform, we'll give you a thousand dollars. I'm like, well, why would I mention your podcast platform if I'm using a totally different one? Like that doesn't feel good. And I have literally turned down probably about $10,000 now, at this point in time, to monetize the podcast by mentioning different companies that I work with. Or that I don't work with that just pitch me to be mentioned on my podcast. My podcast does extremely well, 25th in Canada last week, by the way. Crazy, crazy, crazy town.
So, I wanted to pitch this company that I love, and I would scream from the rooftops and just share, share, share whether they pay me or not. But I did want to practice, stretching myself a little bit to see if they would be interested and hitting up a spiritual entrepreneurship in a spiritual community through my podcast Spirit School. And I would have no gripes sharing this company. It is totally in alignment. Good deal for them. Good deal for me.
Using a Tone to Stay Small
So, I prepared this email and one of my assistants, who's also named Danielle. I call her the other Danielle. I love her so much. She's actually a journalist and she's like an editorial journalist. I'm so lucky. So I rarely ask her to do copy editing for me because I don't care that much about sounding super fancy or sounding above my actual capacity in this life. But when you're pitching another CEO on something, I wanted it to be like super professional. So I had her edit my message and she voice memoed with me yesterday and she said, I know you didn't mean to come across this kind of fan girl tone, but it did feel like a little bit fan girl. So I just wanted to heighten it a little bit, so it was CEO talking to CEO. And I had to just laugh.
Recognizing Purposefully Dimming Your Light
And I wrote her back saying, you know, the funny thing Danielle is I just recorded this podcast episode on my fear of success. And I talked about this exact thing, feeling like this small kid at the big table. And I did mean it like that. And that was actually my intention. And that was actually the vibe I was trying to get across. And this is exactly how it displays in my life, staying small, dimming my light, appearing less magnificent than I am. Feeling like that little kid at that big table, talking to this other CEO. It's so natural to me to be like that. I felt so called out, and just that one story alone wanted me to rerecord this podcast episode, cuz I'm off the energy of that now. And yesterday's was fine, but I'm already happier with this podcast episode than I was with the one I did yesterday because of that.
Identity, Your Job, and Capitalism
So you may find yourself feeling like that. I was in the hair cutting chair the other day and I found myself even shrinking in that situation. And I even thought about that on the way home, I kept trying to diminish what I've accomplished in my life. In North America, we're a capitalistic society. So everyone's like, what do you do for work? What do you do for work? I'm telling you, if you go travel, like if you go to New Zealand, no one cares what you do for work. It's not your personality. You know what I mean? Like your career, the way you make money, is like not your full personality in other parts of the world. But it is in North America because capitalism, right.
Imposter Syndrome and Diminishing Your Work
So that's always one of the first things people ask each other, what do you do for work? What do you do for work? My work is very impressive, right? Not to someone like my husband, don't get me wrong. Though, he was very impressed about my podcast stats last week. He was like dead impressed. But, telling somebody that you're a medium or that you have an online school and that you're a podcaster, you're an end of life doula, like these are all very kind of fascinating things and it does get a lot of attention. I'll be honest with you, for somebody who suffered with stage fright for so long and somebody who is constantly walking through life dimming themselves and overcoming like a lot of imposter syndrome, I found myself shrinking and trying to like really diminish what I do for work. Oh, anyone can do this and da, da, da, da. And I do believe that anyone can do it, but in the spirit of which I'm saying it is intentionally try to make myself appear less shiny.
Changing Relationships and the Dynamics of Success
Now here's the truth. And this is another way that it comes up in my life. I've lost a lot of friends because of my success. I have. I have lost a lot of friends. I had two friends two years ago stop being friends with me. One said your success makes me feel like a failure. And another person said your success makes me feel like a has been. And two great friends that I'd had for years, that I thought we were complete mutuals, completely stopped talking to me, unfollowed me and we are no longer in each other's life. So I actually have some evidence in my life now that being successful, and having success, means it's lonelier than it was before. And it was already lonely.
Seeing Evidence that Fuels a Fear of Success
So I actually have some evidence here, and this is how it shows up. Other people might think I'm bragging or I'm self-absorbed. It's not socially acceptable, like if you wanna fit in. And anyone who's really interested in this type of path in the spiritual space, for a lot of us, like, we never really felt like we fit in, like truly. And then we finally find our people in the spiritual space, only to find out that if you become successful, that nobody else wants to hang out with you, or be known with you, or be compared to you. I was not prepared for that. So again, like there's a lot of reasons and a lot of evidence that I've had in my life that it's not safe to be successful.
Fear of Failure, Fear of Success, and Shame
Another way that this might show up in your life is, you know, that fearing of what other people think about you, that you're you're bragging or yourself absorbed. And also perfectionism and procrastination are connected to worthiness, which is connected to shame. Right. These are all just different expressions of shame. If we get to the root of everything, shame is a big one. I think Brene Brown does like a ton of work on this as well, but your perfectionism and procrastination is an exact expression, not only of your fear of failure, but also your fear of success. Right. So waiting. And I see this a lot with clients. I have this idea and it takes them like a year to launch. And I'm like, just launch the thing, cuz it's gonna change a hundred times. I promise you. Sometimes we do have to throw spaghetti at the wall to see how it feels and course correct as we go. But a lot of people won't allow themselves to be that vulnerable to get there. Why fear of failure, fear of success. Right. And I've seen this too, actually with some of my clients, like I definitely have some space, but I don't wanna keep a wait list and so they end up like, not doing the thing.
Still Wading Through the Fear of Success
So now I wanna get into some of the realizations I've had and I'm still healing this aspect of myself. It's very rare for me to record a podcast episode on a topic that I'm still figuring out. Usually the stories you guys hear, and the topics that I talk about, are things from a couple years ago. I usually go to my development journal and I'm like, what was I worried about in 2015? And I'll look at a topic and I'll riff on it, because I've walked through that fire. I've walked through that path. I'm still walking through this path. I'm still walking through this fire. But I will say that there's big growth with it because I have stretched myself a lot more since I've really been aware of this fear of success.
Coming into Acceptance around Rejection
And I have been rejected more than I have been accepted. I went my whole life, like up until last year, doing everything I could to avoid rejection. Everything. And then feeling rejected every single day and getting burnt out because I'm like, I can't make everyone happy. I have to come into acceptance that I will not make everyone happy. Not everyone's gonna get it. And the second I stopped trying, the second rejection stopped hurting. I'm like, what do I feel like talking about? What would I like to learn? And getting out of that value trap, and that worthiness trap, and that perfectionism, and that procrastination. It's like all just expressions of shame. And just trying to like, do what I do for me, and trust that because I like it, because I love it, the people who are meant to get it will get it. The people who won't, they'll go figure something else out. And that's perfectly fine because there's somebody for everybody out here.
Missing Examples of Success
So why might this appear in your life? Right. And I've done a lot of reflecting on this. One, as I said before, I have not seen people in my space or even in the coaching space, which is kind of like a close parallel to self-help, wellness, spirituality. Like it's all kind of in a similar bucket. So, the people who do have influence, and the people who do have that power and that perceived success that capitalism says that we should be striving for, and that we have, I've never seen it really used in a really powerful way that resonates with me. There's no one I can think of that I would want, like their life, their bank accounts. If I did have their bank accounts, I would probably do something completely different with it. You know what I mean? I just don't have any lived examples of people who have the influence of power and success in the way that I would personally want it.
A Message from My Guides about Power
Past lives. Funny enough, I had a good friend, Malibu Medium, text me out of the blue two weeks ago and all she said, and I'm paraphrasing here, was it's okay to be powerful. You are safe to be powerful. You will not misuse your power in this life. And when I tell you I was dead stopped in my tracks at that moment, I was dead stopped in my tracks at that moment, because one, there was so much truth that I felt in that message. I do feel that my guides were speaking through her, getting something to me I didn't even know I needed to hear.
Past Life Experiences with Power
And then I recalled that when I was working on another problem, around fear, around my children, actually in 2017, I took myself through a past life regression experience, because I can't be hypnotized actually by anyone else. I know that for a fact. I have paid thousands of dollars to try to be hypnotized and I'm just not a candidate for it. I took myself through this experience and I pulled out my notes from that 2017 experience. And I had two lifetimes. One where I was a seer, in really olden times, obviously. And I was kind of like the jury and justice provider for the village, for the community. So people were brought to me and I was in a position of great power. I was actually the most powerful in the village. I was the one who decided if people lived or died. And I sent a ton of people to their untimely death. I was the cause of so much pain and so much injustice from that power. And so, it makes sense why I would have that resistance to holding that type of power again. Can I trust myself with it? And of course, this is lifetimes ago.
Misuse of Power in a Past Life Experience
And then I had another lifetime where I was a little kid working in a print shop. Back then, the written word, it was like, oh my God. When have we ever seen the written word? I got a sense that this lifetime was like in the 1500s or something. But the person I worked for was so mean. He beat me and I would work like 20 hour days and I would not get breaks or food, all just for like a couple shillings to take home, to like my mom, so she could feed all the other kids. I think it was like eight or 10. I don't think I lived past 10 in that life, but I watched this person fool everyone. Everyone loved him. He was a pillar of our society. And in the back end, he was horrible. Hated people, hated his life. And I saw another example of a misuse of power in that life.
Fear of Success Might Change Who You Are
So sometimes some of the things that we walk through in this life aren't necessarily tied to this lifetime, or even our ancestral lineage. Sometimes it is past life. Right? Fear of success might change who you are. This is a huge one for me. Huge one. Because I like who I am. And in truth, I did get a comment, when I first changed my old podcast intro. So I had my original one and I changed it again cause I was feeling so expanded and I was feeling so happy. And my God, when I changed that podcast intro, people hated it. Some people liked it. Some people hated it. I hated it just because so many other people hated it. I did originally like it. And I was so proud of it and it actually took me forever to record. I was over the moon. I had just started working with a public speaking coach. I felt like I cracked something open to myself.
Critical Reactions and Their Effect
And then I released it and I got a comment from somebody saying, I remember when you were just like us. It's so sad to see. And I felt crushed. Oh my God, I felt so judged. I felt like, oh my God, this is what happens when I feel good about myself. I get totally humbled and humiliated. And that has actually been my whole life, that's come up. Anytime I feel good, somebody will say something critical to me. I very much avoid criticism, but now I'm better at it. This was a couple years ago, like two years ago. I can totally handle criticism now. But man, I couldn't for about 38 years. That was a huge, huge wound. Oh my God, I've changed. I'm like egotistical now. And I'm self-absorbed and oh my God, like really like diminishing myself, making myself shrink back in. If success means that I have changed and like, my audience hates me because I'm changing. Well, that's not safe.
But then as I sit back and I reflect even more on that, I'm like, well, why do we assume that change is always gonna be for the worst? Right? Like, why can't we assume that if we do change because of some success that it could be for the better? Why do we default to that negative way of thinking about it?
Fear of Success, Sustaining Success
Another reason why this might appear, and this also is very common, and for people who are chasing any level of success, this is what comes after, and I'm just forewarning you. Okay. And it doesn't matter if this comes up with how many clients you book, how much money you make in your corporate career, how much money you make in your entrepreneurship career. You will get to where you thought you wanted to be. And when you're there, you think, can I do this again, or is the best behind me? Is this sustainable? Fear of success all over it. You finally reach a goal and immediately, you turn it on its head. And you're like, I don't think I could do that again. I don't know if this is sustainable. Am I a has been? Is the best behind me? You know what I mean? And so, this is also part of how the fear of success comes up and why it might happen.
Healing on the Spiritual Path to Success
What can we do about it? So we have a fear of success. I'm still working all this out. So everything that I am providing to you is something that I have either experienced or has come into my awareness to work towards a way to become healed of this fear of success. And I will say, I feel if I were to put an arbitrary, non evidential number on this, I'd say about 80% there, especially because I don't fear criticism or rejection anymore, which were the two biggest barriers to me really stepping into success. There's so much healing on this path, my friends. You think just in the development space, you need to heal. There's just as much healing when you're in the business space. My God, I never felt rejected or criticized before I stepped into the business space. When I was in the development space, I just wanted to be liked. You know what I mean? I just wanted everyone to walk away happy and like they got value out of me. Value's also a worthiness trap, by the way. Please, please, please, please. Heal that shit.
Create Your Own Evidence that Success is Safe
So what can we do about it? Create your own evidence that success is safe, right? And not only that, but like success is something that is self-identified and self claimed. If I asked 10 people right now, what does success look and feel and sound like for you? I will get 10 completely different answers. This is another one of those things in life that is completely subjective to the user's experience. Right? You're the user, what I'm talking about here. So understanding that success is an inside job, completely. Society might tell us collectively that having the big house, having the big yard, having the steady income, a surplus of money, having a pile of money to sleep on every single night is the center of success.
Success is a Feeling
Then why are the happiest people in the world living in poverty? And I'm not just saying that out of nowhere. There is actually countries who dedicate a huge budget and a lot of resources to increasing the national level of happiness as their collective. If you haven't seen the documentary Happy yet, on Netflix, it's an oldie, but a goodie. I think it's from about 2014. Life changing movie for me. They go around to all walks of life, and some of the happiest people are the people who have the least in life, the least material, the least finances, are the happiest. That's success, right? I mean, to me, success is like a feeling. And I feel success all the time. For me, I know that there's a shadow side to success, of course. And I know that to feel success, I also have to feel with success isn't. But I know that there's an opportunity for me to stay in that energy like a little bit longer than I do, because what happens is self sabotage comes in.
Self Sabotage at times of Success and Expansion
So how does this show up? Going back a little bit, self sabotage. I've done it so many times. Numbing with alcohol. Food, cannabis, TikTok scrolling. That's self sabotage, whenever you feel so good, and so expanded. Abraham Hicks talks about this in one of her rants about addictions. And I absolutely loved it. All you're doing is like trying to feel good, but for those of us who didn't grow up, feeling that great, feeling that good is foreign to us. It's not comfortable. You know what I mean? We have to learn to acclimate to the comfort of expansion and success and everything going well, especially for people who had chaotic childhoods, and a lot of like past trauma that they're working through. It's such a foreign feeling, you can hardly even hold onto it.
I remember when I first started connecting with angels, I couldn't even sit in that energy for that long. I was like, this is too much for me. It's like too extreme, this level of joy and love. And I had to do some work to create like micro moments of joy and love, so I could acclimate to that level of the presence of the divine and the angels. Angels in particular, I've never felt an expansive feeling like I did with angels, and I have with angels. Even spirit guides, departed, loved ones, my own ancestors, my pets in heaven. Nothing has come even close to that feeling of love and joy and safety and overwhelming presence than that of angels for me. You know what I mean?
Success is an Internal Experience
So, understanding that success is really self identified and self claimed, and it's an internal experience. The other thing that you can do about this is getting really clear on what success looks, sounds and feels like to you as an individual. So then you don't have some sort of mirage to chase because that's what we are all doing right now. We're all walking around fearing success when we don't even have an identity for it. We don't have an idea of what that looks like for us. So then we're constantly in chase mode and we're leaning into apathy and complacency because every time we think we're getting something we wanted, we realize, oh, that's not it. That's not it. That's not it. Right.
Celebrating Success
Another thing you can do is celebrating the success as it comes in. I used to do this a lot more in my communities, but I feel like people, when something happens so much, it's like they get a little bit numb to it. So I'm always trying to switch things up a bit in my membership. We did the success post every once in a while. And then people stop contributing. And I'm doing spirit messages now, and people are stopping to contribute. So, it's like keeping things fresh and going, but we used to celebrate success a lot.
Deep Wounds Around Success
And I think that that is completely part of our healing journey of fearing success is like, Hey, I just had a successful moment. You know, when I launched my Spirit School platform two weeks ago, I don't think I've ever been so proud of anything I've ever done. And I remember asking the world of spirit, is it okay that I feel so proud of myself right now? Because again, this phobia around appearing to be bragging, or being self-absorbed, is such a deep wound within me, I almost was going to the spirit world to ask for permission. Can I celebrate this? Is it okay that I feel so good about myself right now? Because I just created something that like, I don't think has been done before.
The Free Spirit School Community
And I get a feeling that this is going to be a really big thing, and I can feel like I'm on the precipice of that. I've been building this foundation for like half a year already. And now it's here and I'm so proud because it blew my mind. It exceeded all my hopes and expectations when I launched Spirit School, the platform. It's free, by the way. You can join. Link in bio. But it like literally was one of the best things I've ever done for myself in my practice and my business. I took a couple days to celebrate that and I celebrated by sharing it. I rarely share my success because, guess what? I've lost friends over it. There's evidence there. It's not safe for me to showcase my success.
Success is an Inside Thing
But I did showcase my success. And I messaged my friends. And I sent voice memos and I told my family and I told my husband. And no, no one else gets it. Why? Because that success is an inside thing. No one else is going to get it. But it felt good to celebrate it. Melanie Ann Layer says celebration is a party thrown in the name of gratitude. And what's at gratitude? Abundance. It's so high vibe. I don't use language like that, high vibe, all the time, but it is. It's just such a vibrational shift, is celebrating. So celebrate, celebrate, celebrate yourself, and all the micro successes that you have, every single day, to start to harmonize your relationship with the word success. Learn to love and validate yourself. Don't look for success to be something that's validated outside of yourself. Just give yourself that permission. And then also just become aware of this. We can't heal anything until we have awareness around it.
“I Do Have a Fear of Success”
So if this episode today was helpful for you to become even just like a little bit more aware that you were like, I do have a fear of success. This does come up in my life in this way. That is always going to be the first step. I became aware of my fear of success two years ago. And I'm still on my journey to heal it. We need to get over the fact that things don't happen overnight in this space, by the way. And this is for all my developing mediums out there too, who just wanna get where you're going, enjoy the path. That is actually the thing we're here to do, is the path that we're walking. So please don't rush. Okay?
What if it Turns Out Amazing?
And finally, what I wanna leave you with is just a mind shift. What if it all turns out amazing? What if it all turns out right? What if it all turns out amazing? Think about that. And if you love this podcast episode, come join us in the Spirit School community. We talk about the different podcast episodes and the topics. We have over 400 people in that space now. It's a free community. No strings attached. It's really easy to get onto. It is now completely off social media.
The Spirit School Platform, Off of Social Media
So for those of you who are like me, and a lot of the clients that I have, who just wanna be spiritual in their own ways, in a way that's not super highly exposed to like aunts and uncles, being on Facebook can always be a little bit tricky for some of us really sensitive and empathic people. Off social media. A cozy little nook of the internet. Spirit School platform. It's also where I have my membership and my VIP programs and The Initiation, all those different things. But there is a free space in there and it will always be free and it will always be really active. There's a ton of people in there communicating.
Come join us in the Spirit School space, and if you're already there, start talking about this. Where does fear of success come up for you? Are you about done with it? Are you ready for what's next? And I hope to see you in Spirit School.