Are you often afraid to trust that when things go well they stay well? Do you live by the credo: Pride comes before a fall and are therefore very cautious about enjoying success? Actually that is a pity, because what you give attention to grows. So enjoying success should also lead to more enjoyment of success.
What about pride comes before a fall?
After all, how true is it really that pride comes before a fall? This was examined in a British study of older English people. This study found that there is no evidence at all for the idea that pride, or too much pride, comes before a fall.
The interesting thing was that even the reverse was true before. So if you had a lot of pride, you were doing well. Had little pride or courage? Just then the likelihood of a "fall" was higher. Your age, gender, wealth and whether you had "fallen" once before had no influence on this. In this study, though, it was literally about falling, so not that your life would suddenly be less good[1]. Still...
Looking forward to unhappiness?
So what about when things are going well in your life something bad happens again? Then you actually have no confidence in the future and this lack of confidence can prevent you from really enjoying the success you have now.
After all, what is success and what is failure or falling? These are actually very subjective words to which everyone gives their own meaning[2].
Perhaps in good times you focus on "the fall" and look more negatively at negative things in your life than you would when everything is "normal."
You may even wonder if what you see as a "trap" is actually a trap.
For example, research shows that circumstances in your life can cause you to expect less from the future than you did before that circumstance. For example, if one of your parents has died, you may suddenly think that you will not live to be that old[3].
Are you perhaps primed by your beliefs to look right at the negatives in life?
You may also suffer from a bit of a bias for yourself (self serving bias). This means that you feel you have achieved success for yourself, but if something goes wrong then it is because of something else[4].
If you're afraid you'll be looked at if you can't maintain success, it's nice to have something behind you that you can blame for the lack of further success and then at times like that you can start focusing on those worse things that can happen.
For example, are you going to give a presentation and it may threaten your feelings about yourself, your ego, self-reflection and self-esteem. Then you can already start looking for an excuse why the presentation won't go well. Instead of focusing on how to make sure the presentation does go well.
Interestingly, it is precisely people with high self-confidence who can suffer from this bias. Even if you are motivated to achieve certain tangible goals you may suffer from this[5].
For example, you may think you are successful if you get no questions at all after the presentation. This is a very tangible goal, but then when someone does have a question it can feel like a trap.
Instead, you can set a different kind of goal, such as: The presentation is successful if I do my best and can make a connection with the audience. Doing your best is something much more within your control and is less threatening to your self-image.
How high or low do you set the bar?
Then you can also see if you haven't set the bar for "the fall" a little too high after achieving success.
Success is usually something of a snapshot, after which everything returns to normal. Of course, it's nice if you can repeat this success.
For example, with the HIN, I have times when training begins and it's nice when many people sign up for that training. One year is different from another year. Then if one time it's a little less, do I fall?
Or is everything actually still going pretty well?
Also see for yourself how realistic the bar you set for yourself is before you say you are falling.
For example, a participant in one of my courses indicated that she had no money for extras, but by actually being creative and scouring Marketplace now this helped her to still have that feeling of success and not have the feeling of falling after previous other success. In doing so, she thus took responsibility for her success and how to deal with failure, making failure still a source of success.
She was allowed to enjoy her life no matter how good or bad things were financially. Then you don't even feel that fall anymore. Then there isn't even a fall to worry about anymore.
Changing Beliefs
Your focus and how high you set the bar depends on beliefs you have about how life works and how you are supposed to function in it. For example, if you think you have to buy everything new, then something like layoffs will hit you harder than if you think it's ok to look for bargains.
If those beliefs aren't helping you genuinely enjoy success because you're always afraid of "the fall" and that it won't stick anyway. Then it's time to change them.
Beliefs often originate in your childhood. Perhaps you once became super disappointed when the expectation of how nice your life was and would remain for a while didn't come true at all.
A bit of a thing when you grow up that everyone has to deal with when mom and dad no longer take care of everything for you.
Only such a belief you usually don't automatically double-check in your adult life. However, this is something you can do using regression, a hypnosis technique that allows you to go back in your mind to the moment when such an unhelpful belief arose.
Next, you will reinterpret this moment. A hypnotherapist helps you with this by asking certain questions or giving assignments, for example. This can give you new insights and this can even change the whole way you see the memory.
This alone allows you to start enjoying success more and not fear "negative" change. Change is then just change and nothing else.
Changing your focus
Do you look forward to negative things when things are going well to say "see, I'm right again that misfortune always follows success." Then it's also time to do something about your focus. Actually, you suffer twice when you start worrying about upcoming unhappiness and then when it is there.
By focusing precisely not on everything that can go wrong you may not even see it and anyway you halve the suffering for yourself.
With mindfulness , for example, you can keep your thoughts in the here and now so you can actually enjoy yourself.
Notice that even then you focus on negative things? Then repeating helpful hypnotic suggestions can also work. For example, a hypnotherapist will give new beliefs when a belief has been removed so that there is not an empty hole about how to deal with success. This can be done by those suggestions, for example, and you can then repeat them at home to prim yourself to enjoy yourself every day.
These may include suggestions such as:
"I get to enjoy."
"Enjoyment is also part of life."
"I am valuable."
These are just examples. Depending on how you came to believe that you should not enjoy success because it will get worse afterward, you may also receive other suggestions from the hypnotherapist.
Enjoy more success through greater confidence in the future
There are also other ways to be more confident. Like stimulating the cuddle hormone helps you feel more confident anyway. Research shows that people who often have low confidence benefit more from oxytocin than people who have some sort of average confidence to look more positively toward the future[6].
Ways to stimulate your body's production of this hormone is hugging someone or petting your cat or dog, for example.
Want to learn more about hypnosis and how it can help you enjoy life more? Then come to the free online master class.
Or enroll in one of our training courses. Great for yourself and if you want to coach other people to make the most of their lives.
