I might just being dense or, perhaps more generously, completely un-self-aware, but I genuinely don’t understand the premise of this argument.
Internal resistance is an attempt to avoid the pain we associate with successfully doing the thing.
We subconsciously believe that succeeding in doing something — that we’ve presumably never done before — will cause us some “emotional pain”, thus we go to lengths to avoid it? If what we’re attempting is novel, how could we possibly know that? Even if we were to assume that, why would this “pain” override the elation of success?
I can understand the argument that people procrastinate because of the fear of failure…but the fear of success? I don’t get it.
Back when I was in school, I was consistently punished for succeeding too much. Finished with my tasks? Here's extra. Knew more than the teacher about the subject? Shut up mister wise guy. Understood the subject and wanted to discuss it? There's no time for debate.
Made something amazing on the computer? Stop playing on the computer, go outside instead.
High-achievers in toxic environments, no matter how cliché, is surely too niche to generalise to everyone. Still, I get it now — thanks :) — and while I can empathise to a degree, I think it must be highly subjective. Maybe the author’s choice of the word “pain” wasn’t the clearest.
Let's say you had a parent who was very successful in their business field.
Let's also say that parent was either terrible at being a parent or a bad spouse. If they were a bad parent, that impacted you directly and if they were a bad spouse, that may have impacted someone you care about aka the other parent.
You may have at some point in your childhood created an emotional connection between:
- good at business
- bad at parenting/being spouse
You in turn might then equate "being successful" with "being a bad person". Let me stop here and say: yes, this is totally irrational but emotions are, by definition, not always rational.
Given the above, it wouldn't be surprising that you might develop a "fear of success". Particularly so if your goal is to be a better parent/spouse than the offending parent. In other words, "I don't want to be like them!" might affect both the parenting/spouse side of things and, because they are conflated, success in business.
I can understand the argument that people procrastinate because of the fear of failure…but the fear of success? I don’t get it.