The Fear Behind Each Success
Yay!!! But....
Do you ever feel like you can never fully savor your wins because you expect the good days to end?
That amid your success there’s a rumbling of “this won’t last. It will end.”
And so instead of being completely happy about your victory, you fear its death, the day when your good fortune will be gone from your reach.
Success isn’t meant to be consistent. It just can’t be.
Behind a victory, an odd thrilling fear can grow at the same cadence. Every step drags with it the horrifying thought,
When is it going to end?
What if this is the thing that ruins it all?
How long is this flare going to last THIS time?
The past few weeks have been good for me. Even with the occasional rainy June day here in Tokyo, things have been smooth sailing, with work and projects going well.
These collections of small victories have been fueling my strength to endeavor on ambitious ideas.
Yet somehow in each good outcome, I can feel myself clinging on the edge of my seat, just waiting for something to topple me over. It's like going up a rollercoaster expecting a big fall.
Anxiety becomes an inconvenient obstruction, unable to enjoy good fortune.
A major downfall seems strangely comforting, that it would somehow be better if the universe could just confirm that the good times were never supposed to last. If it’s all going to end at some point, I might as well get it over with, sooner.
I think that there are many ways to make sense of this anxiety.
Perhaps it’s a rendition of the imposter syndrome where you feel undeserving of good outcomes, and therefore secretly pine for some sabotage.
Perhaps some person in the past told you that it is your duty as someone with good fortune to milk it. To leech every last droplet of the momentum since it never lasts anyway.
Perhaps it’s merely the thrill of trying something new and venturing out into the unknown.
But the common thread of all this is that,
this fear, this discomfort, in itself, seems to be a sign that something is happening. There is change. It’s getting good, and that’s why you’re afraid of losing it. Far from complacency and sedentary inertia. Something about what you’re doing is working.
Instead of crediting the anxiety as a trustworthy warning to make rash decisions, acknowledge the anxiety as a sign that you might just be doing something right.
So tread on, and continue to do whatever you’re doing. Because it’s getting good. You only fear to lose things that you care about.
