Are You Pushing Success Away?

By Noah St. John

In Permission to Succeed, I lay out a seven-step process to reverse success anorexia and give yourself permission to succeed. Here are a few tips you can begin today:

Identify Your "Loving Mirrors"
A Loving Mirror is someone who can see you for who you really are, someone who can love and support you unconditionally. While this may sound "touchy-feely," we all need the loving encouragement of someone like a coach, teacher or mentor to become all we can be.

Make a list of the people in your life who can offer you unconditional support. Then do something really weird: call them and ask them for their support. You'll be shocked at how many people will say "yes." (For more resources to help you find "Loving Mirrors", click here)

Become Willing to Succeed
Few people realize that what we want is also what we fear. If you're afraid of success, no matter how many "how-to's" of success you know, you still won't let yourself succeed.

How to reverse this? Try doing a Ben Franklin on yourself. Whenever Benjamin Franklin had a difficult decision to make, he would make a list of the pros and cons of the decision on a piece of paper. You can do the same thing with the idea of success.

What could possibly be a drawback to succeeding? For one thing, you may have to face your fear of the unfamiliar or of people being jealous of you. Another possibility is that others may expect more of you once you start to let yourself succeed.

List the drawbacks and benefits of success and you can take the first step to facing—and overcoming—the fear of success.

Establish Goal-free Zones
A Goal-free Zone is a time and place where you don't do anything. So many of us are overwhelmed by our "to-do" lists every day that we can get to the end of the day and feel we've accomplished nothing, even though we've been running around like idiots all day.

I encourage my students around the world to establish Goal-free Zones, because that way we learn that the world won't end if we take time for ourselves. This can be one of the hardest steps for people who are used to doing everything for others and feeling guilty when they do something "selfish." We are victims of circumstances within our control.

Stopping yourself from the success you're capable of means you're not sharing your true gifts with the rest of humanity. Yet the world hungers for—and rewards—people with the courage to express their true selves. Use the steps above to stop pushing away the success you want and are capable of achieving, and let your light shine in a world that so desperately needs it.

Plus, take St. John's self-assessment, "Are You Pushing Success Away?" from his book Permission to Succeed.

Want to learn more? Consider these AMA seminars:

Author Bio: Noah St. John, along with Denise Berard, is co-founder of The Success Clinic of America. His first two books, Permission to Succeed and The Great Little Book of Afformations, have been translated into six languages. and sold on five continents. He can be reached at noah@SuccessClinic.com or 978-957-9999. His free newsletter is available at http://www.SuccessClinic.com