The Success Recoil: Why We Sabotage Ourselves When We're Winning
You work hard. You set ambitious goals. You push through challenges.
Then, finally, success starts happening. The dream you once imagined is becoming real. But instead of fully embracing it, something unexpected happens ...
You hesitate. You procrastinate. You second-guess yourself. A voice inside whispers: Can I really handle this? What if I mess it all up? Maybe I should slow down ...
This isn't just self-doubt. It's what I call the success recoil, the subconscious pullback we experience when we start achieving what we once only dreamed of.
Why Does The Success Recoil Happen?
Success changes your identity. When you start expanding beyond your old self, your subconscious panics. It sees the unknown as a threat, even if that unknown is exactly what you wanted.
This recoil isn't logical. It's emotional. And it happens to even the most driven people.
• You suddenly feel unmotivated, even though you're winning.
• You create unnecessary problems or distractions.
• You avoid decisions that would move you forward.
• You tell yourself you're 'too busy' to take the next step.
• You start doubting your own abilities (even though you've already proven them).
It's like hitting the gas and the brakes at the same time. Consciously, you want success. Subconsciously, you're resisting it.
Psychologically, the success recoil taps into what Carl Jung called the shadow self: the parts of us we tend to hide because they feel too raw or vulnerable. As success nears, those repressed fears, feelings of unworthiness or the anxiety of being exposed can surface unexpectedly. They manifest as hesitation, procrastination or outright avoidance of new opportunities.
The Fear Of Expansion: A Psychological Threshold
Another key aspect of the success recoil is what I call the threshold of expansion. This is the moment when you're poised to push past your current limits, when the success you've worked for suddenly requires you to grow in ways that feel intimidating. Crossing that threshold means venturing into unfamiliar territory, and that discomfort can trigger an almost reflexive retreat.
Our minds are wired to favor the familiar. Even when we consciously crave growth, the sudden leap into the unknown can overwhelm our subconscious, leading us to pull back. This recoil isn't a sign that we're incapable; it's simply our inner self's way of warning us that change is on the horizon.
How To Stop Sabotaging Yourself And Keep Moving Forward
The good news? You don't have to stay stuck in the success recoil. Here's how to break through:
The first step is awareness. When you notice yourself hesitating, delaying or shrinking back, pause and ask: 'Is this a real problem, or am I resisting success?'
Once you see the recoil happening, you take away its power.
Instead of thinking, 'This is too big for me,' reframe it as:
• 'This is an exciting new level.'
• 'This means I'm growing.'
• 'I am allowed to succeed.'
Your subconscious will always try to keep you in the familiar. But you are not your subconscious. You get to decide.
Action breaks the cycle. Don't wait for the fear to go away; move forward despite it.
• Make the phone call.
• Launch the project.
• Say yes to the opportunity.
• Reach out for support—whether from a coach, a friend, a mentor or a colleague—to help validate direction and keep momentum.
Momentum is the antidote to recoil. Once you take the next step, the fear starts to dissolve.
Success isn't something you 'get lucky' to have. It's something you become.
• You earned this.
• You belong here.
• You can handle it.
The more you practice stepping into your success, the more natural it will feel.
Final Thought: Step Forward Anyway
Success recoil is normal, but it doesn't have to control you. Every time you push through, you expand into a new version of yourself, one that's ready to own the success you once only dreamed of.
So, when that voice tells you to pull back, do the opposite. Step forward. You've already done the hard work to get here. Now it's time to let yourself rise.
Forbes Coaches Council is an invitation-only community for leading business and career coaches. Do I qualify?
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Forbes
7 hours ago
- Forbes
The Differentiation Challenge: Turn Ordinary Into Extraordinary
You can transform the ordinary into extraordinary experiences for your customers. What if I were to ask you, 'Why would a customer buy from you instead of your competition?' In other words, 'What makes you different?' If I followed up with the rule that you can't say, 'We have great service,' or 'Our people make the difference,' because any one of your competitors might say the same thing, how would you answer? The key to this exercise is to be able to articulate true differentiation. Even better is when your customer experiences what you consider to be true differentiation and notices. Jamey Lutz, a consultant focusing on 'fueling irresistible corporate cultures,' has an interesting take on this idea. He refers to it as The Better Sameness Dilemma. In short, the experience is just a better version of what others put out there. It may be a little different because it's better, but it's just another—better—version of the same. Lutz believes that prioritizing incremental service enhancements, such as faster response times to phone calls and messages, shorter wait times and other standout customer service experiences, are important, but they won't be different enough to make you stand out as a leader in your industry. Lutz says most of these enhancements are about the transactions that happen within the experience. A typical journey map that details all the touchpoints where the customer interacts with your business is a great place to start, but you have to go further. Rather than just looking to optimize each touchpoint, play the 'What if?' game with the result being a new standout experience that is noticed and truly differentiates you from the competition. We played this 'game' in our own business. What if I charged 10 times more for a keynote speech? It's not that I would ever charge 10 times more (at least not today), but if I did, is there something I'm not doing or something dramatically different that my competition isn't doing that I could or should consider? Our process started with a team brainstorming session, where we looked at each touchpoint of our client's experience when booking me to speak at a conference. How could we optimize those touchpoints, such as response times to phone calls and emails, or how we send a contract? That's where we start—with basic touchpoints—but while optimizing those incremental experiences may make doing business with us better, all we're doing is creating, as Lutz calls it, The Better Sameness Dilemma. The key is to think differently, bigger—even crazier—to get ideas to consider. Hotels are a great example. There are various prices you can pay for a hotel. A hotel room should be clean and have a bed, a TV, a phone, etc. However, as a customer or guest, you have choices. You can stay at lower-priced or higher-priced hotels. There's a big difference between a Motel 6 and a Ritz-Carlton, and it's much more than the price. While both offer the same basic essentials of a hotel room, the experience surrounding those essentials is dramatically different, and most importantly, recognized by the guest. I recently saw Will Guidara speak about his book Unreasonable Hospitality, which is about how his restaurant Eleven Madison Park was named the No. 1 restaurant in the world on the annual list of the 'World's 50 Best Restaurants.' He explained how he took various touchpoints and played his version of the 'What if?' game. This exercise allowed him to transform the typical touchpoint of leaving a check at the end of the meal into one of the most memorable parts of his restaurant's dining experience. Looking at each of the touchpoints that guests experienced and finding ways to 'break the mold' from a typical restaurant visit allowed him to move beyond the Better Sameness Dilemma. Breaking away from the Better Sameness Dilemma means challenging conventional thinking at every customer touchpoint. By reimagining basic interactions with customers, you can transform the ordinary into extraordinary. In today's competitive world, differentiation isn't about being slightly better. It's about being different enough in ways that get customers to say, 'I'll be back!'
Yahoo
8 hours ago
- Yahoo
The most successful people are not the smartest—instead, they're both ambitious and lazy, career coach to the Fortune 500 says
Forget grinding 24/7 or having the highest IQ in the room. The most powerful billionaires and CEOs know exactly when to cut corners—and how to use their time better than anyone else, the career coach to the Fortune 500, Bill Hoogterp, reveals. Bill Hoogterp has spent decades advising celebrities, CEOs, and rising stars inside some of America's most powerful boardrooms. Through his coaching firm, LifeHikes, he's helped more than 700,000 professionals level up their communication and leadership skills—and personally worked one-on-one with 'thousands' of executives, many of whom appear on Fortune's most powerful lists. But if you think the secret to their success is raw intelligence or long hours, you'd be mistaken. According to Hoogter, one of the most consistent—and perhaps surprising—qualities shared by the ultra-successful is laziness. 'I would say there's a juxtaposition of almost counterintuitive traits,' he tells Fortune. 'Most successful people, if you meet most famous politicians, they weren't necessarily the A students. They aren't necessarily the smartest.' 'What most CEOs have—that almost nobody else has—is that their ambition is way over the top. Now, if you combine that with lazy, you create a really nice blend because if you're really, really hungry to get success, but you're always looking for shortcuts, the combination of those two things leads to lots of little breakthroughs.' By lazy, he doesn't mean they're kicking up their feet and taking a 'quiet vacation' instead of grinding. 'They're like: 'How can I get this done faster, easier, better, and have time and energy for other things?'' Hoogterp explains. Tried and tested shortcuts for success: No big meetings, acronyms or one-to-ones Plenty of high-profile founders embody Hooterp's paradoxical formula. They're not cutting corners to coast—but to outsmart the competition, innovate faster and remain agile in a fast-moving market. Perhaps the most famous example of this is Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, who famously coined move fast and break things when scaling Facebook into the $1.8 trillion social media giant it is today. Likewise, Jeff Bezos' top career advice for his once right-hand man, Greg Hart, was literally to do less himself and delegate more to his employees. 'The fewer decisions that have to go to the CEO, the faster the organization will move,' the billionaire Amazon founder told him. Nvidia CEO and co-founder Jensen Huang doesn't have one-to-one meetings with his 60 direct reports—and it's a deliberate shortcut to innovation. Not only does it save time in their schedules, but more importantly, it ensures ideas and problems aren't siloed in private conversations. 'In that way, our company was designed for agility—for information to flow as quickly as possible,' he said. Then there's Elon Musk, who has a whole list of time-saving and corner-cutting rules for staff, including a ban on big and frequent meetings, no chain of command or acronyms, and an encouragement to walk out of unnecessary conversations. 'Walk out of a meeting or drop off a call as soon as it is obvious you aren't adding value,' the Tesla boss outlined. 'It is not rude to leave, it is rude to make someone stay and waste their time.' Brains alone won't get you to the top—or even hired Hooterp's claim that the most successful aren't the smartest doesn't just apply to CEOs. It's a theme echoed when it comes to hiring too. Countless CEOs and founders have said that they value attitude over aptitude. Amazon's AI boss exclusively told Fortune that stumbling your way through an interview question won't cost you the job. But being fake will. Andy Jassy, the company's CEO (and his boss), has similarly shared that attitude is the make-or-break trait that'll determine your success—especially, he says, in your 20s. Likewise, Cisco's U.K. chief focuses on whether a potential new hire has a positive energy and can-do attitude because, she says, that can't be taught. 'It's more about the person first and foremost than it is about skills or experience,' Sarah Walker told Fortune. And they're far from alone: About 80% of the Fortune 500 use personality tests in hiring, as well as tech giants like Amazon, Meta and Microsoft. A positive attitude is so important that some chiefs would rather remain understaffed than risk having a bad apple spoil the bunch. As Duolingo's CEO told Fortune, 'it's better to have a hole than an asshole.' This story was originally featured on Inicia sesión para acceder a tu cartera de valores
Yahoo
18 hours ago
- Yahoo
Top Execs Fleeing Tesla as Dark Clouds Grow
Another top executive has quit Tesla as the automaker continues a dicey and high-stakes spiral. The Wall Street Journal reports that Troy Jones, Tesla's vice president of sales, service and delivery in North America — its largest market — suddenly packed his bags after 15 years at the company. It's unclear at this point if the decision was his; at Tesla, heads can roll depending on the whims of CEO Elon Musk. Jones' exit comes during a particularly tumultuous time for the EV brand, which is suffering faltering sales and a plunging stock price as Musk continues to be a deeply polarizing figure with extreme politics. Hinting at turmoil behind the scenes, it's also less than a month after Musk fired one of his closest confidantes, Omead Afshar, who was serving as vice president of manufacturing and operations before getting the axe in June. Afshar, who joined Tesla in 2017 as an engineer, was promoted to the position last October to oversee sales and manufacturing in North America and Europe, two markets where the backlash against Musk's role in the Trump administration has been the most intense. Mere weeks before Afshar's departure, Milan Kovac, who was in charge of Tesla's humanoid robot division Optimus, also left the company. Musk thanked Kovac for his time at Tesla, a courtesy he hasn't extended to others who have recently departed. Jenna Ferrua, a human resources director for North America, also left Tesla around the time of Afshar's departure. There are signs of upheaval at Musk's other ventures, too. Last week, Linda Yaccarino suddenly departed her post as CEO of X, Musk's social media platform. Her decision followed almost immediately after the site's integrated chatbot, Grok, went on racist tirades railing against Black and Jewish people, praising Nazis, and calling itself "MechaHitler." Whatever their reasons for leaving, the ex-Tesla execs bailed a ship that, if it's not outright sinking, is taking on alarming amounts of water. Off the back of its first-ever annual decline in revenue last year, Tesla sales have plunged for five straight months in Europe and in the US plummeted by nine percent in the first three months of 2025. This has been reflected in its stock position, with its shares down by over 15 percent this year. The automaker has been caught in the blast radius of Musk's reputational meltdown, facing mass protests and targeted acts of vandalism in response to his eager gutting of the federal government while working with the Trump administration. But to ascribe Tesla's plight to a mere image problem wouldn't do justice to its heap of other issues. Critics have pointed to its aging vehicle lineup for one reason why sales have dried up, with its recently refreshed Model Y failing to inspire customers — illustrated by the desperate financing deals that Tesla is offering, on top of slashing the vehicle's price. The recent launch of a small-scale robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, meanwhile, hasn't made a convincing case that Musk's vision of boldly staking Tesla's future on offering autonomous cab rides will rake in the trillions of dollars of money that he promised any time soon. And all the while, it's facing steeper competition than ever from Chinese competitors like BYD, which has overtaken Tesla as the largest EV company in the world. More on Tesla: A Clear Sign Just Emerged That Tesla Is Panicking
