Neil

Fear of success can be seen as a fear of delayed failure: if you succeed in one task you’re sure to be moved right on to a new competitive arena where failure is even more likely.

At this point, you need more efficient ways of working, and you need the cooperation of every part of you. You’ll need to drop the model of self-alienation that you learned as a child—the one that tells you, “You are lazy and need someone to force you to work.” With this belief, you work against yourself, and resentment and fear of failure drain you of the energy needed to achieve your goals effectively and efficiently.

To unlearn this pattern you’ll need to reduce the amount of pain and threat associated with your work. You’ll need to increase the amount of guilt-free play in your schedule, increase the rewards for short periods of quality work, and put yourself in charge of reducing stress and tension.

Procrastination has been learned, and it can be unlearned.

You’ll realize that the absurd lengths taken to procrastinate indicate how much pain you’ve trained yourself to associate with the task.

For example, notice how you might be mentally complicating a task so that it appears overwhelming. Be especially aware of how you talk to yourself and how your language leads to procrastination or production

Ironically, on a psychological level you are often the one who raises the board off the ground by changing a straightforward task into a test of your worth, proof that you are acceptable, or a test of whether you will be successful and happy or a failure and miserable.

most cases you are the one who confuses just doing the job with testing your worth, where one possible mistake would feel like the end of the world.

In most cases you are the one who confuses just doing the job with testing your worth, where one possible mistake would feel like the end of the world.

It is only the dread of something worse that gets us beyond our dread of being less than perfect and being judged.