You’ll be sure to see yourself here!
Nearly everyone holds themselves back from the super success they could enjoy. Procrastination! Self-doubt! Anxiety! Judith & Jim describe how unconscious allegiances and hold-backs produce The Fear of Being Fabulous plus the underpinnings and the roots of deep hold-backs.
And for this podcast and every one to come, Judith & Jim’s goal is to leave you more empowered and inspired to expand your freedom to be fully you!
Episode: 101 ~ What is the Fear of Being Fabulous? ~ TRANSCRIPT
Hi, I’m Judith Sherven and I’m Jim Sniechowski
We’re a married PhD psychology team. And we welcome you to our Podcast Series “Overcoming the Fear of Being Fabulous”
Jim:
BUT – what actually is The Fear of Being Fabulous? Whenever we talk about it people usually get it right away. They blush, they laugh, they giggle. They know.
Judith:
To define it simply – it’s any way you hold yourself back from being more fully present in your excellence – in any part of your life. It’s playing down your accomplishments. It’s batting away compliments, not going after a promotion, not asking that great person out for a date, not keeping yourself healthy and fit, not living the fullness that you actually are.
Jim:
During our podcast series we’ll be diving into a wide variety of related issues, but for today we want you to understand why we care so much about this topic, and why we believe you probably do too.
Judith:
For example, one of the episodes will be about saying no to opportunities in life – in our lives and in your life. About 30 years ago a computer engineer at a start-up company where we had a tiny spot on their website approached us about joining together to create a dating site. We were doing lots of work with singles back then and it was understandable that he would ask us. And – we didn’t even discuss it, we just said NO.
Jim:
Why? Because neither one of us had come from business families it just seemed like a bad bet and a lot of work for probably nothing.
Judith:
Yes, that’s what we thought. Now, notice – Match.com didn’t start until 1995 and this was probably 1991. Who knows what might have happened if we’d just said “yes”.
And both of us walked away from seriously successful acting careers long before we knew each other.
Jim:
I had starring roles in more than 85 Equity Actors Union stage plays and then went on to have roles in Hollywood television shows like Rockford Files, Quincy, St. Elsewhere.
Judith:
And I had a wide variety of roles on TV – in Star Trek 2nd season, I Dream Of Jeanie twice, Wild Wild West twice, My Three Sons 3 times, Beverly Hillbillies, Owen Marshall, Ozzie and Harriet, and so forth, and I did close to 100 national Television commercials as well. In fact, in 1967 I earned over $50 thousand dollars take home – which is worth about $375 thousand in today’s dollars. That’s what came to me after my agents took their percentage – And I walked away.
Jim:
Why would we both abandon serious success and serious money? Logically it doesn’t make sense. Yet, when your internal identity, your unconscious identity – when it’s not organized and in line with the success you are having, then you have to walk away from that success in order to remain congruent with that deeper identity which is the basis of the Fear of Being Fabulous.
Judith:
It reminds me of a client we were working with recently who graduated from one of the most prestigious universities in the United States and had other exceptional academic success only to string together a long list of jobs where his brilliance helped bail out someone else’s bad choices, or lesser skill – but never allowed himself to shine in his own right, to reap huge financial success of his own making. This was the primary coaching topic, of course, digging into what was it that had caused his fear of being fabulous!
Jim:
So we ask you, what do you notice in your own life where you are not yet allowing yourself to truly shine? Where are you reluctant to say yes instead of no? How might you dodge compliments, avoid asking for a promotion when it’s long over-due, wear a drab even dowdy outfit when attending an important meeting, fail to speak up at meetings where your influence could be important?
Judith:
We could go on and on with examples – but we trust you get the drift. In whatever ways are you not “living up to your potential” as many a school teacher has written home to parents about their very bright but bored youngster. Yes, it still applies to adults – because another way of describing “the fear of being fabulous” is not allowing yourself to live up to your full potential.
Jim:
Here are a few other clues: palming off your success to “being lucky” – and yes a form of luck can play a part in helping you be in the right place at the right time but if you don’t have the talent and the brain power to land the job it’s not going to happen.
Judith:
Another common example is believing that if you can do something, then anyone can do it. But the fact is – No they can’t! This is how you hide from yourself how uniquely talented you are and avoid owning your own right to be fabulous!
And some people consciously hide their potential, fearing the results, should they allow themselves to stand apart from the crowd: They gain weight and dress down, hiding their good looks. Often these people lack the confidence to be able to competently address other people being attracted to them. They don’t feel they can say no when approached by people whose attentions they don’t want. So they hide instead of growing their self-awareness and expanding their ability to live their fullest life.
Jim:
Others hide out behind alcohol and drug abuse, catering to their anxieties instead of learning about the cause and establishing greater confidence and a fuller life.
Judith:
Yes, this was certainly the case for many of the celebrities who have died from suicide or what has been called “an accidental overdose” – they could not fully live their fabulous lives, their extraordinary talents, and the real love that the public gave them.
Jim:
The number one cause for what we refer to as “holdbacks,” like we’ve just described, is early family conditioning – so early the young child’s brain cannot defend against messaging that isn’t a fit for who they are – who they actually are.
Judith:
You see, brain development is an ongoing reality for many years of a young person’s life – and it’s understood that not until between age 7 to around 11 can the brain actually evaluate what is going on around them. Up until then, how they are being raised, what they are being trained to believe, goes in as valid and real. So think about what happens when a young child, say age 5, begins to display musical talent, or interest in science, or is a whiz bang swimmer – and Mom or Dad or a grandparent or some other caretaker – out of their own limited background – says things like “Don’t let your friends know you like to play the trumpet, they’ll laugh at you.” Or “Science is stupid, you’ll never make a living at it, get over it..” or “When you’re at the pool, don’t let the other kids see how good you are at swimming, they may try to hold you down and you might drown.”
Jim:
Yes, people say things like that to children all the time. It comes from their own fears, and the ways they were taught to think about excellence and standing apart that they’ve never outgrown. It comes from their fear that they’ll lose their child to a larger life than they’ve ever had. And it’s all unconscious.
Judith:
The unconscious plays a very large role in The Fear of Being Fabulous” – which we’ll be diving into in many of our future podcasts. But for now, we trust you’ve been prompted to think through some of the ways you have been holding yourself back from a larger life, from owning who you really are!
Jim:
Because we are dedicated to helping you overcome your fear of being fabulous! We’ve had to do it – and we are continuing to take it apart as we constantly move forward in growing our professional impact.
Judith:
A quick insight before we bring this introductory podcast to a close. Neither of our fathers graduated from high school, yet they were both very bright. Neither of them had careers, they worked to support their families and found little satisfaction in their day to day environments. And now here we are, both holding PhDs, working as an Executive Coaching team for major tech companies with clients not only in Silicon Valley, but also New York City, Brooklyn, London, Utah, Texas, Australia, Seattle, and Brazil.
Jim:
We’ve come a long way from our own initial Fears of Being Fabulous – which we’ll be sharing in future podcasts – so we know you can too!
Judith:
Be sure to continue listening – and we’ll see you next time!
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