Here’s the issue with parenting, many times we unknowingly and even sometimes deliberately transfer our personal demons onto our children. I don’t think my father really meant to do harm to me with his words “You Could Never Be”. However, those words rang in my head for years as negative programming. See, I guess my father had an idea even before the doctors that I had a touch of his passed down bone decease Osteogenesis Imperfecta or OI for short.
I won’t get into the detail of the decease; however, in short it means that my bones were softer than normal. I had three siblings with the decease much worse than myself, so this made my own issue seem minor to me. Even after more than 30 broken bones OI just feels like an old friend. The words of my father; however, had a greater negative impact on my life than the OI because it was mental not physical. From my teen’s right into my adult life those words held me at bay from achieving real success. The negative programming from my father created within me somewhat of a split personality when it came to anything I would try to achieve. On the one hand invincibility and on the other debilitating fear of achieving success.
UNRELENTING DETERMINATION
Whether my father was protecting me or deliberately trying to control my thinking, the damage was done. See my Dad was my one and only real hero growing up as a little boy, so what he said when he spoke meant a great deal to me. When I was around 16 my father was upset with me to some reason I cannot recall. He told me in his fit of anger “you will never be one of those body builders”.
At 16 I had been working out about two years and really wanted to be a professional bodybuilder. Hearing those negative words at the time actually set off an unrelenting determination inside of me to become a professional bodybuilder, OI or not. What I didn’t realize at that time was that my father’s words didn’t setup the normal fear of failure many of us adopt from our parents but a fear of success in stead.
I had built-in my mind a negatively conditioned underlined fear of success. I had no tools to fix the problem because I didn’t know at the time there was one. The negatively conditioned fear of success would plague my life for many years to come.
WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE “FEAR OF FAILURE” AND THE “FEAR OF SUCCESS”?
The differences between the “fear of failure” and the “fear of success”, in my mind, are ever so slight and drastically opposed at the same time. The simplest manner in which to describe what was going on in my mind is that there was a conflict of forces. I almost never felt like I couldn’t accomplish almost anything in my life. However, accomplishments that looked giant to on looker’s were virtually insignificant to the inner-me, my enemy.
Every goal that I had accomplished in my life was still me playing it safe, which meant my negative brainwashing was constantly in control of my future. I was still hearing my father’s voice telling me that I could not be what I truly had the potential for being. I get a lump in my throat and a heavy heart even today thinking how many other people are misdirected from what seems to me an automatic pass to greatness. This all because the word of others acts as negative brainwashing, conditioning the mind to fear what should not be feared.
Was my father correct about me? I never did become a professional bodybuilder. I hope you will take the opportunity to read more of this story in my book “I’m Core Fit; Success In One Day for The Rest of Your Life”. Right now I want to conclude this story by telling you that fear of success is almost as debilitating as the fear of failure. What I have found is that when I focused on helping other people and put my life journey on a course which allows me to run on autopilot towards “True Success” things became much easier.
THE TRUE HERO WAS ME AND
THE HERO IS YOU
I love my father and always will. There is a large part of me that still thinks of him as a hero in my life. However, over the years I have learnt to trust in an even bigger hero to bring me truth about my journey towards “True Success”. That hero is me, and your hero should be you.
My life moves in harmony with the “True Success” journey. This all happened over a number of years and through the development of unique systems of retraining my brain to what “True Success” should look like in my life. In other words, I had to become a master of my own mind in order to not only to master my very limited fear of failure but to conquer an even bigger giant. The Fear of Success.
by: Michaelson Williams
