Chronic insecurity? Drug and/or alcohol abuse? Procrastination? Those are just a few of the symptoms that can haunt your life and your career when The Fear of Being Fabulous threatens to undermine your newly acquired success. Mind you, those are only the symptoms—not the cause!
To expand your awareness of the cause, and begin to examine what can be done to turn The Fear of Being Fabulous into the power to Magnify Your Excellence, which was requested after my first post, a close look at three reasons success brought down Whitney Houston will help shine light into the darkness surrounding every person’s unconscious mind-power.
But first, be aware that this is not "one size fits all" psycho-babble. Rather what Whitney Houston’s life and loss exposes is how unprepared-for-success can be lethal (as we’ve seen with any number of celebrities and notables in other fields). And on a lesser scale, it can bring down well-intentioned career goals when they are no longer just goals, but have been made real.
No. 1: Working Hard is Okay; Achieving More Than Where You Came From Isn’t
What level of permission do you have to far exceed the success achieved by your parents and other family members? If you had fairly conscious parents and came from a society that valued maximum achievement you may honestly feel the sky is the limit!
But if, like Whitney who was born in the projects of New Jersey, you came from lesser means and have worked your way up far beyond your roots, you may feel guilty about surpassing parents, siblings, even cultural background, totally unaware of what my husband Jim Sniechowski and I call Unconscious Forbiddance.
The evidence indicates that Whitney surrounded herself with relatives and friends who "were on the dole" and who provided drugs and ghetto culture reinforcement which many relatives and friends said she craved, while she struggled to maintain a stardom she could never internally embrace.
If you are aware of self-sabotaging behaviors, see if you can identify any discomfort with your current level of success, for example guilt, fear, perfectionism, trigger-rages, hyper-criticism of your peers and/or direct reports. Make a list and search your conscious mind for how these behaviors keep you more comfortable with your success. Yes, comfortable! In a later post, I’ll get into how the unconscious is always succeeding - the question is at what.
No. 2: Emotional Pain and Disappointment Are Okay; Receiving Praise and Recognition for Your Outstanding Excellence and Leadership Isn’t
How often have you found yourself complaining to your friends and/or family about how unfair your boss was being, or how a professor was playing favorites when you were in college and you weren’t one of them, or someone you were dating had dumped you and you were miserable? It could be anything that made you unhappy. But the issue to examine is how comfortable you were complaining compared with how uncomfortable you may be when telling the same people about getting a promotion, a large bonus, nailing a juicy sales prospect that others had failed with.
Early in her career when Whitney appeared on the Merv Griffin Show and the audience exploded with wild applause she only knew to applaud the audience rather than receive their embrace. When she was given the many awards of her career, video coverage shows her routinely thanking "God and Jesus Christ" and "Mommy and Daddy" while looking anxious and eager to get off the stage.
Begin to pay attention to any difficulty you experience with receiving compliments, even small things from friends—but more important praise that comes from your boss and/or your colleagues. Do you believe it and take it in, or are you instead chronically anxious with concern about how well you are doing? Become as conscious as you can about times when your Unconscious Forbiddance deflects praise and recognition leaving you wanting.
No. 3: You Want More Success, But No Matter How Much You Succeed It’s Never Enough
How well have you integrated your current status in the workplace so it sits comfortably within your identity? Is it congruent, stable, and joy-filled? Or do you feel a bit like a fish out of water? Or maybe a lot out of water, ready to jump out of your skin many times daily as people question you and your decisions, call you into meetings to get your opinions, stop you in the hall to pin down some fact or another, and each time it feels like an interrogation rather then acknowledgment of your expertise?
Whitney never gained confidence in her talent, was never able to change her identity to BE the superstar she became. Instead she was chronically fearful of her audiences, anxious before her audition for the film role in "The Bodyguard" – even when Kevin Costner had already told her he wanted only her. And the money-making aspect of the music business bothered her even while she built her financial equity to an estimated $240M.
Where in your life do you notice that you fall back into "old patterns" rather than enjoying internal permission to adopt a new more successful identity that you can fully live and enjoy? Keep track. Notice any guilt or anxiety associated with attempts to advance. As you become more aware, the goal is to make your Unconscious Allegiances and Forbiddances more and more conscious.
Beyond the tragic life of Whitney Houston, remember Bill Clinton in the Oval Office with Monica, Governor Mark Sanford in Argentina with his mistress while he claimed he was "hiking the Appalachian Trail," Lindsay Lohan and her chronic inability to build a solid platform under her success, and every other instance that comes to mind where super success was undermined if not destroyed by unconscious forces—The Fear of Being Fabulous.
Judith Sherven, PhD and her husband Jim Sniechowski, PhD http://JudithandJim.com have developed a penetrating perspective on people’s resistance to success, which they call The Fear of Being Fabuloustm. Recognizing the power of unconscious programming to always outweigh conscious desires, they assert that no one is ever failing—they are always succeeding. The question is, at what? To learn about how this played out in the life of Whitney Houston, check out http://WhatReallyKilledWhitneyHouston.com.
Currently working as consultants on retainer to LinkedIn providing executive coaching, leadership training and consulting as well as working with private clients around the world, they continually prove that when unconscious beliefs are brought to the surface, the barriers to greater success and leadership presence begin to fade away. They call it Overcoming the Fear of Being Fabulous http://OvercomingtheFearofBeingFabulous.com.