Fear of Success

One telltale sign of low self-esteem is the fear of success. Nathaniel Branden says, “Brilliant people with low self-esteem act against their interests everyday.”

This sometimes happens with coaches. One may feel threatened in her ability by a new more experienced coach coming in, and changes everything — she over compensates or underperforms, or she becomes undependable when she was not at all before.

A gym owner or head coach may feel threatened by a subordinate with great ideas, and as a result, does not take their good suggestions to enhance their program, or takes the other’s suggestions as their own.

In these two instances, a low self-esteem generates a feeling of inadequacy, and as a result, the person lives up to this opinion that they have of themselves.

This can also happen with gymnasts. Fear of success can get in the way of progress. Sometimes, a gymnast can’t “see” herself succeeding. Thoughts of “I’m not good enough” or “that’ll never happen” cloud the path to success. If a gymnast doesn’t believe that she is capable or deserving, then there will always be a wall between her and her goal.

As coaches and parents, it is our job to help nurture her self-esteem so she can remove that wall, and remove those underlying beliefs on inadequacy.

We see this in gymnasts when they don’t fully go for a skill. They are playing it safe because if they go for it fully and don’t succeed, then they will be disppointed (fail). On the other hand, if they go for it fully and succeed, it doesn’t match what they believe about themselves. They are relegated to their self-fulfilling prophesies.

Parents and coaches need to nurture the belief of adequacy. We need to help our gymnasts believe that they can succeed, and that they deserve to succeed.

My ‘Success Saturday” this week in the Gym Rats Exclusive Membership is about just this. Click here to get your 14-day free trial and get immediate access to more resources for your gymnast!