Overcoming the Fear of Success

I've got a problem. At least, I used to. Success freaked me out. I thought I wanted to be successful, but I really didn't.

Oh, I'd think a lot about wanting to make more out of my life, to do something that filled me with passion and excitement, but I never bit the bullet and did it. You know why? I was scared I'd fail.

Failure, to me, meant saying I was going to do something publicly, trying to do it, and then not being able to do what I wanted to do. I've always been like this, for as long as I can remember.

1. Everyone's scared. 
   No one has it all together. If you talk to any successful person, you'll find out that, not only were they scared to begin doing something different, they still get scared every time. It gets incrementally easier, but the fear never goes away. Professional athletes still get nervous before the game. Musicians still have butterflies in their stomachs before concerts. Authors freak out the night before their books are released. What you're feeling is no different that anyone else.
2. No one's paying attention to you.
   This is a corollary to lesson #1. People are so worried about how things are going for them they don't have time to be concerned about anyone else - especially you. Consequently, people spend time worrying about other people, who really have no time to worry about anyone else because they have problems of their own. See how silly this all is? Oh, sure. There are some people who are paying attention to you. But, they're usually your spouse or family or really close friends. The kinds of people are going to be supportive of you, anyway. That's a good kind of attention.
3. You have to know where you want to go.
   What's the old saying? “If you don't know where you're going, any road will do”, I believe is how it goes. You need to figure out what your dreams are for yourself. Once you've figured out what you want to do, you can put a plan together to achieve it.
   
   One of the things that always concerned me about goals was hearing all of these “self-help gurus” saying you have to set huge, aggressive, audacious goals for yourself. The implication was that if you don't dream big, you might as well not bother. That always put me off, because I've never wanted anything really big in my life. No huge mansions or Ferarris, no yacht in the Caribbean.
   
   I came to believe that everyone needs to start somewhere. If you have a lot of credit card debt that you want to get paid off, that's a fine dream. There's nothing wrong with your dream of a debt-free life. You don't have to want to build a multi-million dollar business in order to put the power of dreams to work for you. Just start dreaming, and however big or small they are is good enough for now.
4. Do what makes you happy, and don't worry about others. 
   Obviously, you have to be smart about this. I'm not saying run out on responsibilities and obligations you have set for yourself. What I'm saying is that there are very few people in this world who's approval you should be after. Your spouse and kids, maybe your extended family's, if they're supportive; that's about it. If a person doesn't have a vested interest in your success, you can confidently disregard what they think about what you're choosing to do. The only way you can count your life as truly successful is if you're doing what you're meant to do, regardless of what society at large thinks of it.