Are you more scared of failure or success?
WRITTEN BY: Rebecca English-Williams: True You Therapy and Coaching
Ok, so that sounds like an obvious answer, right? I mean, duh… failure, obviously!
Except maybe not.
While most of us can easily understand why we’d be scared of failing, we don’t often talk about the fact that success can feel pretty bloody scary too. Think about the thing you keep putting off in your business. Putting your prices up. Launching the new service. Posting the video. Going after the bigger client. Finally leaving the safety of your employed job. Actually letting your business grow.
What if the thing stopping you isn’t that you don’t know what to do? What if part of you is worried about what might happen if it actually works?
Success can mean being more visible, more people having opinions about you, greater expectations, more responsibility and more opportunities to get something wrong. It can even mean outgrowing people, relationships or an identity that has felt safe and familiar for years.
So yes, consciously, you might desperately want your business to grow. But another part of you might be quietly saying, “Steady on. We’re quite safe here, thanks.”
And suddenly that procrastination starts to make a little more sense.
Sometimes the fear is older than the business
Here’s where it gets really interesting. Sometimes the thing holding you back in your business didn’t start in your business at all.
Maybe you learned very young that being quiet kept the peace. Maybe being helpful made you feel accepted. Maybe getting everything right helped you avoid criticism. Maybe standing out brought unwanted attention, so staying small felt safer.
These patterns weren’t stupid. They were actually pretty flippin clever. At the time, they may have worked beautifully.
The problem is that we can continue using the same protective strategies long after the original situation has gone. So adult you is thinking, “I want to grow this business. I want to earn more. I want to put myself out there.” Meanwhile, another part of you might still be working from much older information: “Visibility isn’t safe. Getting things wrong isn’t safe. Disappointing people isn’t safe.”
That can show up as procrastination, perfectionism, people-pleasing, undercharging, avoiding difficult conversations, endlessly tweaking something rather than launching it or saying yes to clients you know aren’t right for you.
We often call it self-sabotage. But what if it’s actually self-protection?
Your business has a funny way of finding your sore spots
I’ve been self-employed for three years, and running a business has taught me an enormous amount about myself. There really is nowhere to hide.
Pricing can bring up questions about your worth. Marketing can bring up fears about being seen and judged. Sales can bring up rejection. Boundaries can bring up the fear of disappointing people. Making mistakes can send perfectionism into overdrive.
So you can have the strategy, the business plan, the mentor and the fancy spreadsheet and STILL find yourself not doing the thing you know you need to do.
Instead of immediately asking, “How do I make myself do this?”, it can be much more useful to ask, “What am I worried might happen if I do?”
What if you stopped fighting yourself?
Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS) offers an interesting way of looking at this. It works from the idea that we all have different ‘parts’ of ourselves, and even the behaviours we find frustrating often have a positive intention underneath them.
So rather than immediately trying to get rid of the procrastinating, perfectionist or people-pleasing part of yourself, try getting curious about it.
What is it trying to protect you from? When might you have learned that this behaviour kept you safe? And is that belief still true today?
The part of you that learned at ten years old that standing out led to criticism may still react to visibility as though the same danger exists today. Except now you’re an adult. You have choices, boundaries, experience and the ability to cope if somebody doesn’t approve of you.
Recognising where a pattern came from doesn’t mean blaming your childhood for everything or spending the rest of your life looking backwards. It means understanding why something that seems completely irrational today might once have made perfect sense.
When we understand that, we can start responding to ourselves with curiosity rather than criticism.
So, what are you actually afraid of?
The next time you notice yourself avoiding something you genuinely want to do in your business, get curious before you give yourself a hard time.
What are you worried might happen if you actually do it? What might you be trying to protect yourself from? Does this fear belong entirely to what’s happening now, or does some of it feel familiar from somewhere else?
And perhaps the biggest question of all: What would happen if I could go back to that older version of me, heal where it all first started and trust myself to handle whatever happened next?
Because sometimes growing your business isn’t about another strategy, goal, course or colour-coded spreadsheet.
Sometimes the thing that needs your attention isn’t your business plan.
It’s the part of you formed many years ago that’s scared of what might happen if it actually works.
About The Author
Rebecca English-Williams is an IFS Therapy Practitioner and PASEDA360 Accredited Advanced Practitioner in Transformational Coaching. Through True You Therapy & Coaching, she helps people heal the past, understand the parts of themselves that are holding them back and move forwards towards a life they love. Her approach combines professional training with lived experience and a firm belief that the patterns we often give ourselves a hard time for usually started as clever ways of protecting us.
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