Pride comes before a fall: still enjoy success

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.

What was interesting was that the opposite was actually the case. So if you had a lot of pride, things went well. Did you have little pride or courage? That’s precisely when the chance of a “fall” was higher. Your age, gender, wealth, and whether you’d “fallen” before had no influence on this. This study was literally about falling—not about your life suddenly taking a turn for the worse[1]. But still…

Looking forward to unhappiness?

But what about that saying that when things are going well in your life, something bad is bound to happen? That actually means you don’t have confidence in the future, and this lack of confidence can prevent you from truly enjoying the success you have right now.

After all, what is success, and what is failure or falling? These are actually very subjective terms to which everyone assigns 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 won't live to be that old[3].

Are you perhaps , because of your beliefs , a bit primed to focus specifically on the negative aspects of 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 of being judged for not being able to sustain your success, it’s comforting to have something to fall back on—something you can blame for the lack of further success—so that in those moments, you can focus on the negative things that might happen.

For example, if you’re about to give a presentation and that threatens your sense of self—your ego, self-reflection, and self-esteem—you might start looking for an excuse why the presentation won’t go well. Instead of focusing on how to ensure the presentation goes well.

Interestingly, it is precisely people with high self-confidence who may be prone to this bias. Even if you’re motivated to achieve certain tangible goals, you can still be affected by it[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 form during childhood. Perhaps you were once deeply disappointed when your expectations of how wonderful your life was—and would remain—didn’t pan out 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 that you can truly enjoy the moment.

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 sign up for one of our training programs. It’s a great way to treat yourself—and if you want to coach others to get the most out of their lives.