5 Signs That Anxiety is Crippling Your Earning Potential– Episode 425
5 Signs that anxiety is crippling your earning potential.
I work a lot with people with anxiety. All the different kinds: social anxiety, fear of public speaking, panic attacks, driving anxiety, fears and phobias, etc. These fears and anxieties can have a huge negative impact on our lives, of course.
But the biggest impact that people feel from having anxiety is the impact it has on their careers. Because how you do in your job or career is quantifiable. You can measure it. You get feedback from people and results. It might be reflected in your paycheck.
It’s so frustrating to know that you could be doing better but you have a sense that you are holding yourself back. And the reason you are holding yourself back is almost always fear.
So today we’ll talk about 5 signs that anxiety is crippling your earning potential.
Some of these you might recognize, with others you might just have a sneaky feeling that it’s true for you. Some may not apply to you at all. If so, great! The intent is to become aware and root out the ways in which anxiety is stopping you from greater success. Judy Blume said “Each of us must confront our own fears, must come face to face with them. How we handle our fears will determine where we go with the rest of our lives. To experience adventure or to be limited by the fear of it.”
It’s important to understand that it’s not necessarily the smartest people that achieve success. Often it’s the people that are ok with taking risks. They are ok with failure. They don’t let fear stop them even when they are afraid. Here are the 5 signs:
Opportunity knocks and you pretend you’re not home. You know how sometimes someone knocks on your door and your like “Shhh, be quiet!” You don’t move and you just hope they go away. You’re being offered chances for advancement and turning them down, dragging your feet responding to invitations or missing application deadlines to take advantage of these opportunities. Or, you’re turning down leadership positions. You feel conflicted: you want it but what if you get it? What if you’re not up for it? What if you screw it up? Doubt, fear and anxiety come up to pull you down and sabotage your success.
2 You lack confidence when it comes to putting yourself out there.
You avoid building relationships or alliances that can be beneficial. You’re not networking because of social anxiety or not feeling good enough to hang out with people you think are successful. Or you’re afraid that being seen might result in someone saying “Hey let’s get together sometime and see how we can work together” or “Hey I’ve got an opportunity for you!” You’re playing it way too safe.
3 You are afraid of failure or afraid of success. These are two different things. Fear of failure is “What if I try and don’t succeed and I’m embarrassed and humiliated, and everybody finds out I’m a loser.” Fear of success is, “What if I do really good and I get so busy I don’t have time for my family or I end up working all the time or I get too stressed out or people start to resent me because they’re jealous?” It’s called tall poppy syndrome, the idea the if you rise above the rest, you’ll get cut down.
4 You have rationalizations for staying at your current level of success. This sounds like “Oh, I’m ok with the money I’m making”, or “I don’t really want any more challenges or responsibility, I’m good.” Or you’re apathetic: “I don’t really care because I can’t make a difference so I’m just going to cruise along and collect my paycheck and keep my head low.”
5 You feel like an imposter: Imposter syndrome. “What if they find out I really don’t know what I’m doing. I’ve got them all fooled so far, but if I take on more or try to play a bigger game, they’ll find out I’m a fraud and I’ll be chased out of town by people with torches and pitchforks.” This is a biggy for a lot of people and it’s a very popular topic right now. And I’ll tell you what, even very successful people feel this sometimes.
Now, maybe you have good reasons for staying where you are. Maybe you are super happy with your level of success in life. Maybe you don’t network because you don’t need to. That’s great. But… if you know, deep down inside that you can do more, be more and contribute more and you’re not because of anxiety and fear, well that can really take the juice out of life and leave you feeling defeated.
I personally don’t want to look back and say “I could’ve been a contender.” I don’t want to look at other successful people what are enjoying success and all that comes with it while thinking to myself: “I am just as good as they are, why are they doing so much better than me?” I don’t want to look back and say “I could’ve done more but I was too afraid.”
So you really have to do some soul searching here and bring a high degree of self-awareness and self-honesty to your life to see where you are being stopped. Remember, the job of our minds is to protect us from what is unfamiliar and unknown. The known is where we are now, and the unknown is where we want to be. We need to get our subconscious minds on board and in line with our conscious goals, dreams and desires. That’s essentially what I help people do as a hypnotherapist. However, the first step is always self-awareness. Identify what is stopping you so that you begin to address it.
I’m posting the text to my podcasts now at http://tedmoreno.com/blog so if you come across one of my podcasts and wish you could read it, that’s where you want to go.
If I can help you to identify and overcome fear and anxiety that is keeping you from your profession and personal goals, , feel free to request a complimentary consultation at https://tedmoreno.com/contact. We’ll talk about what’s going on, I’ll answer any questions you have, and we’ll explore if working together is the best path forward for you.
“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’ You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”
–Eleanor Roosevelt
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