The five fears that hold you back – not being good enough

Do you always give up on your goals or fall frustratingly short of them? Find out if a fear of not being good enough is sabotaging your success, and how you can eradicate it.

Over the past three weeks, career management coach and corporate trainer Jane Jackson has shared some of the five big fears that hold us back in our careers:

This week she’s focusing on our fourth big fear – the fear of not being good enough, revealing how it’s linked to our self-esteem, and why we deserve better.

Why do we give up on our goals?

It’s easy to set ourselves aims and goals, but not always quite as simple to reach them. Just think about New Years resolutions. How many Januaries have you promised yourself that you’d get fit, lose weight, get a new job, relax more, smile more, have fun again etc over the next 12 months?

And how many years have you seen those resolutions slip within weeks? It’s not that we don’t desire the benefits our resolutions would bring, or genuinely hope we’d attain them. So why do we give up on them? I wonder if the reason is connected to our self-esteem?

Ask yourself, ‘Do I deserve to be trim, taut and terrific? Do I deserve that new job? Do I deserve to be relaxed, to be able to smile, to have fun?’

If you hesitate when considering whether you deserve the goal you are aiming for, it may be a good idea to honestly examine your self-esteem.

Fear can affect everything in your life

You see, fear that is connected to your self-esteem can affect everything you do in life. You may settle for a job that you hate and doesn’t pay enough because you think that you aren’t clever enough, or that you’re not strong enough to handle more responsibility.

Or you may remain in a relationship that makes you unhappy because you think that you don’t deserve to be treated in such a way that makes you feel good about yourself.

You may also avoid making the positive changes needed to improve your life. After all, if you don’t believe you deserve better life circumstances, you aren’t going to be able to create them.

You deserve to be the best you can be

Instead of doubting your entitlement to your goals, try thinking about this instead:

  • You were born with rights.
  • You deserve to be the best you can be.
  • You deserve to behave in such a way that will enable you to achieve all you can to command respect.
  • You deserve to be as good as anyone that you admire.
  • You can be who you want to be.

By acknowledging and actively replacing self-limiting beliefs and negative self-talk with more positive and empowering affirmations, you can slowly start to change your beliefs and attitudes, and lose the fear that you won’t get what you desire because you’re not good enough.

And instead, you can work steadily and confidently towards your goals, safe in the knowledge that you have the right to achieve them and that you can do it.

Who knows, you may even manage to stick to next year’s New Year’s resolutions too?!

Jane Jackson is a career management coach and corporate trainer specialising in building the confidence of executives who have experienced a redundancy or are at a crossroads in their careers. Her 7 Step C.A.R.E.E.R.S. programme, addresses all of these mistakes.