Looming success, originally uploaded by Thorsten Becker.

Looming success? That sounds like an oxymoron. Usually we associate the word ‘looming’ with something negative – failure, disaster, crisis. Merriam-Webster gives the following definition of looming:

1: to come into sight in enlarged or distorted and indistinct form often as a result of atmospheric conditions
2 a: to appear in an impressively great or exaggerated form b: to take shape as an impending occurrence

This definition shows a clear correlation between looming and perception, something may be looming over us hence appear blown out of proportion, larger than it really is and therefore create a sense of anxiety. So how can this pertain to success?

I recently watched J. K. Rowlings commencement speech at the 2008 Annual Meeting of the Harvard Alumni Association titled “The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination”. She pointed out the concerns her parents had for her future as well as her own fears of failure which ultimately came true, but in the end enabled her to make significant changes in her own thinking leading up to a successful writing career. I am going to state that everyone of us has feared failure at some point in our life, mostly during childhood. Maybe we were scared of giving a wrong answer when called on by the teacher, or we were scared to get a bad grade on a difficult assignment, or we were frightened to death when having to present something in front of the whole class. Once we leave school/college we may be anxious during a job interview, fearing that we do not measure up to the expectations of our potential employer. We often perceive such events as looming over us until we reach and conclude them. However, as we get older and usually more confident we’re less inclined to fear failure and are more secure in our skills and abilities. But something curious can start to occur at this point, something we usually don’t pay as much conscious attention to as we do with fear of failure: fear of success. While success makes us feel good and more confident a sudden, unexpected, unprepared for success can raise equally sudden, unexpected, unprepared for expectations, expectations we didn’t consider. Now we have to live up to these expectations, or so we feel. Because if we don’t then there is this fear of failure again that we thought we’d overcome. What happens next, and I’ve observed this with myself and many others I’ve worked with in the past, is a mental aversion to what I would call ‘success beyond our comfort zone’. Panic induced reasoning sets in, debating with us the implications of such success: increased expectations, less time for things we enjoy, increased exposure (in case of publicly observed success), potential jealousy from peers. This may have dramatic consequences as we may end up talking ourselves out of pursuing something we’ve dreamed off for a long time. I challenge you to think of times in your life when you had a chance to go above and beyond but didn’t because you feared the implications in case of success.

While failure can be very disappointing it can also lead us to think that this is all we can do and achieve and we should be happy with it and nobody should expect more from us. We can become quite comfortable with the occasional failure, a reassurance that we’re perfectly fine where we’re at and there is no need to strive for more. We are often our own worst enemy, our own great inhibitors by way of false reasoning. But as the word ‘looming’ indicates something may just appear bigger than it really is. Hence what we think to be the final results of success may not actually come true, or at least not in the dimensions we imagined. If at times you find yourself scared of failure I encourage you to stop and think if it may actually be fear of success. And if so consider this to be a matter of perception, and our perception can be distorted! Don’t let it hold you back from going for something you’ve always dreamed off. Success should never be ‘looming’, it should be shining brightly.

Tags: anxiety, contemplating, decisions, failure, looming, Musings, Photography by Thorsten Becker, Photoshop, success

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 22nd, 2009 at 15:34 and is filed under Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.