Success Sabotage
Written by: Jennifer Byrne, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
How do you define success? Success has its benefits. It requires tradeoffs. Those tradeoffs are risks that may be sabotaging your success.
You may be avoiding some of the best opportunities in your life because of the change it brings (yes, even if it’s a positive one).
Anxiety, fear, stress, anticipation, and self-doubting behavior cause even the most successful people to avoid, you guessed it…more success.
As human beings, we like what makes us comfortable. It provides us a safe space with a good sense of who we are. It is hard to imagine who we can be because it separates us from our current identity.
Side effects of success include:
Upward career mobility
Gaining greater visibility from peers, family, friends, and colleagues
Being viewed as “better than average.”
Less time for other things.
More money and higher status
Or even worse, you may like it!
And more…
The path to greater levels of success causes us to move away from our current identity to an updated version. It takes us out of our comfort zone, challenges us, and creates new and exciting opportunities.
Change is dynamic. With increasing levels of success, there is loss. Even if it is simply the loss of the familiar, we may place a greater emphasis on emotion and logic than our intuition.
There are things you can do to elicit a response to change that will help you achieve greater success:
Acknowledge what you are feeling is normal.
Evaluate the positive aspects and address the losses.
Step back to consider what needs to be accomplished to accommodate the change and set reasonable goals towards it.
Have a support network.
Think broadly. After all, you cannot anticipate everything that will happen. Provide yourself space for surprises that may come up.
Remind yourself change is not easy.
Yes, change catapults you into a place filled with unanswered questions, unknown possibilities, and uncertain results. On the other hand, it can be very exciting, eye-opening, and bring you to places you never felt possible.
“Don’t wait. The Time will never be just right.” — Napoleon Hill
Jennifer Byrne, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Jennifer Byrne is a certified life and career coach. She helps her clients overcome the fears that are holding them back, increase confidence levels, discover their life’s purpose, and achieve greater levels of energy to reach their full potential. Jennifer’s message to her clients is “Follow Your Inner Compass.”
With more than a decade of experience in organizational development, coaching, and mentoring in both corporate and non-profit environments, Jennifer brings a wealth of practical knowledge to her coaching work. Jennifer earned her B.S. from Monmouth University and pursued advanced degrees, including her MBA and M.Ed. She is certified as an Energy Leadership Master Practitioner (ELI-MP) from the Institute of Professional Excellence in Coaching (iPEC) and holds an Associate Certified Coach (ACC) credential from the International Coaching Federation. Despite the demands of her career, Jennifer makes time to be involved with community and professional organizations. She is a member of ICF Global and local ICF NYC chapter in which she actively participates on the Member Engagement and Social Outreach committees.
Jennifer lives in Ocean County, NJ, with her husband of 14 years and two dogs. When not working, she loves to explore the outdoors.
