F06 · Fear and Avoidance
Fear of success and the Jonah complex
Evading one's own highest potential because greatness brings responsibility, visibility or envy.
Cues
Showing 6 of 6 cues
“You can completely lose track of incredibly positive things about yourself - your beauty, goodness, strength, and virtue ... the so-called Golden shadow.”
If not you, then who else?
Maslow asked students who would write a great novel or become a great composer; when they squirmed he asked: If not you, then who else?
“The concept of greatness entails ... being able to be different.”
“The difficulties of our psychotherapeutic work teach us to take truth, goodness, and beauty where we find them. They are not always found where we look for them: often they are hidden in the dirt or are in the keeping of the dragon.”
“The impetus that makes you fly is our great human possession. Everybody has it. It is the feeling of being linked with the roots of power, but one soon becomes afraid of this feeling ... That is why most people shed their wings and prefer to walk and obey the law.”
“We fear our highest possibilities. We are generally afraid to become that which we can glimpse in our most perfect moments ... We enjoy and even thrill to the godlike possibilities we see in ourselves ... And yet we simultaneously shiver with weakness, awe, and fear before these very same possibilities.”