If you aren't reaching your goals and it feels like when you get close, you back from your dreams, fear of success may be getting in your way. Fear of success tempts us to procrastinate, fall behind and make excuses. If so, or if you've ever felt that success is scary, you need to understand what else is going on below the surface. Once you do, you can master fear of success and achieve your goals and dreams bt following five steps.

Fear of demands

First of all, if you fear success, it's highly likely that what you fear about success is not actually success itself. It's more likely that below the surface you fear that if you reach a goal or dream you might not live up to what people will expect of you.

What you think might expect of you if you become successful can stop you dead in your tracks, at least for a while. This is especially true if you've coasted or only recently stepped out to make a move to fulfill a goal or dream.

The other thing that's probably true if you fear success is that you've probably been hanging back and coasting. If you've been coasting it's likely that you have a hard time of conceiving of yourself as suddenly successful. In some way the concept you have of yourself doesn't quite fit how you imagine a successful person to be.

That's partly reasonable. If you haven't fulfilled your vision of what it means to be successful, it makes sense that your self-image doesn't fit your picture of what being a success is. And if you don't fit the picture you won't let the picture happen.

As a consequence you may sabotage success by procrastinating, falling behind, making excuses or otherwise appearing flaky or unreliable. Or you might come to the brink of success and simply stop there, vacillating—like someone who completes law school but doesn't take the bar exam; or like someone who finishes requirements but doesn't file the paperwork for a teaching credential.

The reason for all this is not necessarily that you think you’re undeserving of success. More likely it is that you think you will not be able to handle demands that you believe success might bring. One presumed demand is that people will raise their expectations of you and you will be under pressure to perform at a high level all the time. Another is that you will lose control of your life and the ability to set your own pace and make your own choices. And finally you fear that you will be exhausted, worn down or have arrived at a life you don’t value and never wanted. 

These fears are both distortions and exaggerations of what is real. If people see you as competent, it is true that they may turn to you as a go-to person for getting things accomplished. But who says that that means you have to lose control and meet everyone's demands or expectations? Besides,if you look closely, you are exhausted and worn down now. In response don't tell yourself you don't really want success anyway.

People who have this particular fear have often seen effectiveness modeled as taking on the demands of others, being unable to say no, becoming burdened and losing autonomy. Or what they have seen touted as success is something that they have no appetite for. These are not inevitable consequences of competence and success. And they are no reason to choose for yourself a marginal existence of minimal opportunities, personal expression and personal achievement.

Here is the way to master fear of success in five steps: 

1. Don't hang back but instead move forward.
   
2. As you move forward, consciously, deliberately stay in charge of your choices.
   
3. For help, watch the actions of people who succeed but retain control. They are out there. Look for them. 
4. Notice how it is that they define success according to their values.
   
5. Study what they do and adapt it to who you are and what you want. In other words, define and live your success according to your values.