Welcome to The Toxic People Detox, a practical guide for finding peace in the midst of toxic people. It’s not about changing toxic people but changing how you respond to them and doing so in a productive, healthy way.
This is Episode 004 – The Fear of Success & How to Overcome It. If there’s one thing you can count on with toxic people, is that they fear your success. What happens when you fear your own success? Why would you fear your own success and how can you overcome it?
In today’s episode I’ll cover:
A lesson from one of my favorites movie of all time
4 Reasons why we fear success
4 solutions to those fears
Read Full Transcript
The Fear of Success
Welcome to The Toxic People Detox, a practical guide to finding peace in the midst of toxic people. It’s not about changing toxic people but changing how you respond to them and doing so in a productive, healthy way.
This is Episode 004 – The Fear of Success & How to Overcome It. If there’s one thing you can count on with toxic people, is that they fear your success. What happens when you fear your own success? Why would you fear your own success and how can you overcome it?
In today’s episode I’ll cover:
1. A lesson from my one of favorites movie of all time
2. 4 Reasons why we fear success
3. 4 solutions to those fears
One of my favorite movies is “The Wizard of Oz,” the one that came out in 1939. When you compare that movie with a lot of movies that have come out in the past, say, 25 years, “The Wizard of Oz” has held up exceptionally well.
I remember a movie that came out in 1996. It’s called “Dragonheart.” It’s a dragon that’s voiced by Sean Connery, Mr. James Bond himself. You go back and look at that movie now and you realize, “Wow, this thing is not aging very well, especially compared to ‘The Wizard of Oz,’” which still looks great especially now that it’s come out in HDTV.
My favorite character of “The Wizard of Oz” is Glinda the Good Witch. When I was a kid, there was something about Glinda. She’s only on screen twice, but she stood out to me. Why? Because she flat-out lies to Dorothy. And yet, she’s the good witch? Say whatever you want about the wicked witch, you doesn’t hide the fact that she wants you dead!
Glinda tells Dorothy to go see the Wizard of Oz and that he might be able to help her get back to Kansas. Doesn’t Glinda know that the Wizard of Oz is a fraud? How could she not know that? Of course, she knows, she knows the Wizard is a fraud, and then toward the end of the movie, Glinda even says, “Dorothy, you had the power to get yourself home all along,” to which the Scarecrow asks, “Why didn’t you tell her that in the beginning?” I love her answer.
Glinda says, “If I had told Dorothy the truth, she wouldn’t have believed me.”
Glinda deliberately mislead the Dorothy because she knew that Dorothy wasn’t ready to hear the truth.
To really bring this point home, if you had told me, say, back in 2005 that I would be a college professor, I would have said, “No way. There’s no way in this life or the next that I would ever want to be a college professor,” especially at the university where I graduated from, where I got my bachelor’s from. I said, “I would never want to set foot on that campus again, let alone teach there,” but yet, at the time of this recording, here I am, teaching and actually enjoying it.
One of the highest-paid speakers in the world is Tony Robbins. If he’s not the highest paid speaker, he’s definitely probably in the top ten. If you look at Tony Robbins, listen to how he describes himself at a time where it was a very low point in his life, when he was living in a 400-square-foot apartment and he washed his dishes in the bathtub. If you had told him, “Hey, you’re going to be one of the highest-paid speakers in the world,” he probably wouldn’t have believed you.
When you tell people that they have the potential for greatness, they probably won’t believe you because it’s hard to see beyond our ci...