Pearl Escapes Fear of Success Practical Trainings

By Pearl Howie

From best selling Self-Help, Counselling and Travel author Pearl Howie

Seven practical trainings to help you to escape or overcome fear of success - our greatest fear, our fear of our own power.

Created to be as accessible as possible, collected together and specially edited and rewritten for beginners and anyone who feels stuck and wants to learn how to escape fear of success for themselves. This is a holistic (mind, body, spirit) way of working, with a step by step approach to escaping our fear of success, of getting on back to living again and enjoying life.

These seven trainings work together, so that you can move forward towards your own authentic success:
- Awareness
- Action Training – the “Dip" Method
- Analysis
- Other People
- Action Training – the “Dunk” Method
- Development
- Adaptation

If you wish to “go confidently in the direction of your dreams” the action trainings in this book will explain exactly how we can do that. Many great teachers instruct us on how important it is to take action, but not many go into the detail of "How?"

This book also includes related problems such as PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), grief and complicated grief, survivor guilt and Imposter Syndrome, including practical mantras and meditations for healing.

This special edition also includes the brand new chapter "Embracing Power, Sharing Privilege".

Praise for "Pearl Escapes Fear of Success" and video trainings

“Pearl is a brilliant teacher and human being. I feel so at ease and relaxed.”

"Lately I have been feeling that I'm comparing my success in terms of other people's yardstick, but was not sure of this feeling! While reading this book some lines brought tears to my eyes (heart). I'm so glad to have found this. I will keep learning and enjoying MY Success on my terms."

Review for previous work

“To me, you are a hero… You have learned to take something negative in your life and make it a positive... a gift to others. It doesn’t get any better than that. Don’t doubt that you are capable of helping others… in terms of other of life’s difficulties… What an adventure!” Susan Jeffers, Ph.D. author of Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: May 5, 2022
• ISBN: 9781471708800

Book preview

Pearl Escapes

Fear of Success

Practical Trainings

By Pearl Howie

Copyright

Copyright © Pearl Howie 2021

The moral right of the author has been asserted

The right of Pearl Howie to be identified as the author of this book has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Design & Patents Act, 1988.

ISBN 978-1-4717-0880-0

All rights reserved.  Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher or in the case of reprographic production in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

Published by Pearl Escapes

www.pearlescapes.co.uk

[e-mail]

Dedication

We are a family.

Disclaimer

Trying to describe feelings and many of the concepts in this book with words is like trying to describe colours; if you understand what I mean by the word blue great, this will work for you, if not, if you imagine a darker colour, a lighter one, or a colour you would call blue but I would call green, I am sorry that we are not able to connect, to communicate right now.  Try again later.

I am only responsible for what I say, not for what you hear.

Introduction – Embracing Power, Sharing Privilege

I first created these trainings as video courses because I wanted to make escaping fear of success as accessible as I possibly could. I’ve thought about that a lot in bringing these seven trainings together in one book – trying to make this as easy to read and understand as I possibly can.

In some ways, I wanted to make this suitable for a four year old to understand, because that’s the youngest age I’ve taught dance to, and I’ve seen kids light up when I’ve made fitness something they can enjoy and have fun with. I wanted to do that with fear of success, but I’m not sure I’ve succeeded because I didn’t feel it was right not to include some serious issues around our fear of success, like suicide and even the occasional mention of sex. But I hope I’ve managed to write about these subjects with a light touch, with respect and in a way that young people and families can still use this book and these trainings.

There’s so much in here, but if one of these trainings, one of these exercises works for you, then I’m proud of this book and of myself as an author and a teacher. I’m even going to take credit if you discover it doesn’t work for you really, but it helps you move on to the next thing you want to try, because that’s also progress, that’s also success.

But, in this introduction, I want to share something that may be too complicated, too advanced for you to follow. If you can’t follow it, that’s not your problem, it just means that I’m not that talented a teacher, an author yet (and you can just skip on to the rest of this book).

I fight fear of success. I do it by helping people to feel alive, doing what makes their hearts sing. But recently, in myself and in others, I feel the root of that fear of success… our greatest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

Why are we so afraid of power?

Studying fear of success has taught me that there are many dimensions, many related problems to it, but at its heart is our fear of what will happen, who we might become, if we allow ourselves to be real, authentic, to use our authentic voice, gifts, to tap into the authentic power we all have within us.

For some, it is, without doubt, that we have witnessed abuse of power. No wonder we have become wary of grasping the power in front of us, of using the power within.

I could argue that this is becoming more relevant every day, especially for the younger generation growing up in a pandemic, as we all see more reports and evidence of corruption and the use of a global emergency for personal gain. Is it true that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely or is there another way? Do we need to also reflect on how great leaders, like Nelson Mandela, like Ruth Bader Ginsburg have used their power so that we can remember those other ways?

This last year, I have been blessed to do an online apprenticeship not just with Don Miguel Ruiz, author of The Four Agreements but also his sons, Don Jose Ruiz and Don Miguel Ruiz Jr. Following on from that apprenticeship, I also did a shorter training of a few weeks with Jose, a training on using mirrors. Practising with a mirror sounds simple, but it is an incredibly powerful practice, and each time I looked into the mirror, I saw something new, another truth about myself, about life and the universe.

When we practised with the mirror, although it was summer and daylight, we did our best to make our rooms dark, and do the practice by candlelight.

One day, as I was practising, I looked into my eye in the mirror and I felt terrified. I saw the power within me and it scared me to my core. I looked into my eye and I saw my father and my father’s power in me.

I saw someone who was so powerful and who was a bully, who used their charisma, their charm to get out of trouble, to manipulate and hurt people, to get their own way. I saw the power of a dark storm and I saw it in me.

I had to stop practising and go for a walk. Luckily as I was walking, I passed a new shop in our village, a beauty shop, and on the door was a notice The BEAUTY you see is your own Reflection.

It made me smile. It also made me think. It made me think, reflect, look in the mirror at how I had used my own power. Had I been a bully? Had I used my charm, my charisma to get out of trouble, to manipulate others, to get my own way?

Sure, I’ve made mistakes, but I could look at my life and say, No. I could say that, ever since Pearl Escapes began, I’ve done my best to use my power to help others heal.

I’m not rich, I’m not surrounded by adoring fans. But I have been blessed and continue to be blessed, to be loved and taken care of, I can’t believe sometimes how wonderful my life is or how kind people are to me, but I have learned that this is what happens when you live life with an open heart, when you are true to yourself, when you are successful at being real, being authentic.

Perhaps the best analogy I can use about embracing power is that it’s like learning to drive. I’ve made mistakes on the road, because, well, nobody learns to drive perfectly on the first day. We have to learn how to drive responsibly. We have to figure out, not only what we learn by the book, but how to be kind, not to always be in such a rush that we don’t have the time to allow others to go first. But we also need to learn how not to allow others to take advantage of us… all while in control of a large piece of metal that could conceivably kill us, all the passengers and people around us. Anyone who drives a car needs to learn the responsibility that comes with that kind of power.

And sometimes we can come off the road shaking and frightened to drive again, because we’ve had an aggressive road rage incident with a much larger or out of control vehicle.

Being on the receiving end of abuse of power - intimidation, harassment, discrimination, bullying, prejudice - can often lead us to hide, to fear figures of authority and, when others try to thrust power into our hands, we drop it, afraid of what we might, in turn, be capable of or the damage we might accidentally cause.

We all have power and we all have privilege. Sometimes the difference between the two can be confusing – is driving a power or a privilege? When we know that some drivers are stopped and prevented from driving because of their skin colour, don’t we have to accept that it is both?

When I was a child, we would probably have been known as what you would call under privileged, mind you, it’s another label I wouldn’t have liked, even back then. At that time, there’s a good chance we were the poorest family in our town, which is actually saying quite a lot. We knew we were lucky to have a roof over our heads, enough food to eat and to be warm, even if it was, sometimes, just by all sleeping in the same bed. But I’m not sure we were truly safe in our home until we got our dog.

When we moved house, and later at university, it was wonderful to re-invent myself, to no longer be known as the poorest, but brainiest kid in my class. What a relief! I could start to be myself. At university I was even a lot richer, because I had a full student grant, than some of the kids who came from wealthier families, because they relied on their parents for support (and besides, I had grown up living on very little and knew how to make a couple of potatoes and a bit of liver go a long way).

It took me time to realise that there are other kinds of privilege besides money. To realise that I had the privilege of driving without being stopped because of my skin colour (even though my name still caused me plenty of problems trying to get a job).

Much later, when I started to travel, I realised how privileged I was to have a British passport. To understand that although America was a continent (in fact, it was two continents) it was a much bigger challenge for someone born south of the Mexican border to be allowed to visit the USA.

When I went off on my big Camino de la Luna around the world, that privilege was even more obvious. Even though I broke rules travelling into the USA or Canada, the border guards would gruffly let me through. I was white, I was female, I was English, they may have suspected that I was trying to overstay my welcome or work without a permit, but they let me in. (I’ve had more trouble getting into nightclubs in Portsmouth because I was wearing white plimsolls than getting into the USA without an onward flight.)

But the moment I always think of, when I think about privilege, is the woman I met when I stayed in one of the best hotels in the world, in Malaysia. I had met quite a few women in Malaysia particularly, who were amazed that I was travelling alone, they wanted to ask me questions, to ask how it was possible. So I was assuming that this woman wanted to ask me questions along the same lines when one of the senior staff in the restaurant, where she was working, asked if it was okay for her to talk to me, to ask me some questions. (The fact that she had to ask her manager to ask me if it was okay was already an uncomfortable reminder of just how privileged I was here.)

Instead, she asked me about being vegan. I trotted out my usual answers and she nodded. Then she told me that she didn’t really have a choice about what to eat when she was with her family, but there was one thing she refused. She refused to eat the turtle eggs which were still served up at special occasions as a delicacy (despite it being against all the rules that we have for endangered species). My jaw dropped.

I couldn’t stop thinking about her all evening.

In the morning, I was glad that she was working again, because there was something I had to say to her. "I was thinking about what you said, about not eating turtle eggs.

I know you think I am brave, for travelling here alone, for being vegan, but I know it is very hard to disagree with your family, to not do what they want you to do, so I think you are very brave. 

She glowed.

When we think about privilege, we have to remember that it takes many forms, the privilege to choose what we eat, to choose our own belief system or religion, the privilege to go to school at all, or vote, the privilege to travel, even the privilege to be treated like a human being.

The privilege to marry who we want, to choose who we sleep with or live with, even the privilege for some who we might think of as very privileged to NOT go to boarding school.

When we think like that, when I look back at my childhood, I realise that despite all the difficulties and dangers, I was in possession of a vast amount of rare privilege, even growing up in a household that was free of so many restrictive beliefs. I was raised to think for myself, to choose my own religion, I was raised to know that all races, all sexes, all sexualities were equal. The older I get, the more I realise what a rare privilege that was.

And, of course, I am not disabled or clinically vulnerable.

During the pandemic, that’s been even more important, because I’ve been able, because of that privilege, to support those less privileged. Whether it was doing the shopping when it was tough to get bread in the shops, to making hospital trips possible and as safe as they could be. I’ve been able to share my privilege, even though it’s meant I’ve had to self-isolate and test and take all kinds of precautions not for myself, but for the people I love.

There is some natural privilege, some things in life are just not as hard for us as for others, and there is a whole load of cultural and created privilege.

My favourite moment of shared privilege recently was the partnership of Rose and Giovanni on Strictly Come Dancing. If you didn’t see it (there are so many beautiful videos on YouTube) Giovanni is the professional dancer who was paired with Rose, who is a celebrity, and also deaf. Throughout the series, Giovanni had to come up with new ways of teaching Rose to dance. (I almost don’t want to give away what happened – so look away if you don’t want a spoiler.) She won, they won. As much as Giovanni had been paired with exceptional dancers before, he had never won the competition. When you watch them dance, you can see how great a dancer Rose became. She was not the deaf dancer, she was the best dancer.

What if we made our world like this? Inclusive. Helping others, sharing our privilege with each other. Sharing our gifts with each other?

If you watched the series or the final, you’ll know that time and time again, Giovanni said that he had learned more from Rose than she had from him. Sharing our gifts often means that we gain more from them ourselves. I know I found that when I was teaching, and teaching dance to people with different abilities. It pushed me to become a better teacher, more than that, it made me a better person, and it’s given me a better, fuller, more joyous, more complicated and brilliant life.

Alchemy was once known as the transformation of lead into gold but, in my life, I’ve seen a different kind of alchemy that shines much brighter than gold. It’s the power of people to transform lack of privilege (lack of resources, lack of health or ability, lack of respect, even abuse) into something wonderful. I could call it love but that’s too often misinterpreted, so let’s call it joy. It’s the alchemy we see, so often, from people like Marcus Rashford who, instead of turning away from the childhood pain of not having enough to eat, uses that experience to feed others. It’s the countless people who have suffered childhood abuse who become therapists and healers. It’s everyone who, instead of accepting and taking privilege for granted, appreciates it, even if that privilege is only to have somehow survived their childhood.

It’s leaving hell behind and finding heaven.

It’s looking into your own eyes and knowing that we are all angels, but knowing that we choose for ourselves whether we are good angels or bad ones, whether we choose to be a messenger of corruption and lies or we choose to be a messenger of authenticity and truth.

Awareness

Take What You Need

Maybe you don’t need awareness.

Maybe there’s no part of you that ever gets jealous, angry or sad, maybe you never feel like something’s not quite right, or that there’s more you’re holding yourself back from, or are being held back from or you just can’t figure out.

Maybe you don’t have a fear of success.

I really hope so, but it’s hard to grow up anywhere in this world without being taught rules and ideas that prevent us from being true to who we are, just naturally going forward and embracing our gifts, doing what makes us feel alive and sharing it with the rest of the world. 

This section - Awareness - is to explain a simple practice of looking at our feelings and tracking them back, to see if they come from a fear of success, or perhaps a related problem or, like I said in the beginning, you’re already there, living your dreams and you don’t need this book at all!

This is just the first step, but becoming aware of a problem (as we saw in 2020, when we all became aware of coronavirus) can be a vital part of escaping what prevents us being our most authentic selves, from being wild and free again.

Awareness

One of the things that happens very often, is that something comes into vogue, into fashion and everybody starts talking about it. That’s not happened yet with fear of success, but it has happened with Imposter Syndrome, (which is very close to fear of success and something I’m also going to talk about). So one of the things that happens is that everybody says, Oh yes, I’ve got it. And because the mind is so powerful, we pick up on other people’s problems and can even create them within ourselves. So, in this section – Awareness - I’m going to teach you a way of testing that out (what we can call diagnostics) so you can find out whether or not fear of success is a problem for you personally.

I’m also going to talk about some other similar ideas, problems, conditions… some people might call them disorders.

I think that, too often, we call a sensitivity to something (or a fear) a disorder or a condition, we put a label on it, but for many people it’s just part of who they are, or it’s just common sense! So, if I’m calling something a disorder or a condition please remember that it’s just a shortcut. I’m not judging you. In fact, it’s really important that you don’t judge your own reactions, your own feelings, because we’re going to be using those reactions as part of our testing, our diagnostics, so it’s important that we’re honest.

The goal of this section is to help you to develop awareness, today and in the future, so you can see clearly whenever fear of success is the true problem and hopefully escape each time you feel fear of success.

What is Fear of Success?

There is not just one type of fear of success.

In my book Pearl Escapes Fear of Success I listed five different types of fear of success (I won’t repeat them all, because this is already a very long book) and there are probably even more types we could find.

Fear of success is extremely personal, because something that I am afraid of may be no problem at all for you, just like some people are afraid of snakes and other people keep them as pets!

An important thing to remember about fear is that a lot of the time our fears help us, up to a point.  It may have been really useful to be afraid of snakes if you live in a part of the world or you’re travelling somewhere where there are poisonous snakes, but that same fear might be a bit silly if we are in a country where the snakes aren’t poisonous.

When I was travelling around the world, in some countries a fear of something was really useful, in other countries that same fear would have stopped me from having all kinds of wonderful adventures.

So our fear is personal and it may be absolutely right to be afraid of something! It may be useful for the moment or may be useful in the future or it may have just been handy in the past, when we were younger. That’s why we need to work on letting it go, because it no longer serves us, it’s no longer any use to us. It’s a bit like clearing out the cupboards (or a rucksack when you’re travelling to make it lighter).

Did you know that one of the things that most grown ups will say they are afraid of is public speaking? Standing up and talking in front of a room full of people. Well, let’s think about that for a moment. When we’re younger and we start school we’re usually quite happy to talk all the time! And then the teacher tells us to be quiet, they tell us off if we talk when the room is quiet, and we learn that, if no one else is talking, we should be quiet too. As we get older, we can get into a lot of trouble if we talk too much, maybe even get detentions or sent to the head teacher for being too loud. (When I was at school, the teachers even smacked us!) So it’s no wonder that, as we get older, we can get scared of speaking out loud in a quiet room. Of course, there are times we need to be quiet (maybe when someone else is speaking) but, as we get older, we can stop being afraid and start being wise, sensible, understanding the difference between when we should be quiet and when we should be loud and let go of the fear of being told off by the teacher!

Some people would say that all fear is bad, but in my experience, fear can also be very useful. What we want to do is figure out the fears that no longer help us or serve us or maybe where we might need to switch things around, to look deeper and understand that that fear is actually something else.

So that fear might be excitement.

Or that fear might be to do with something else, maybe just not wanting to do something that isn’t right for us, even if it’s right for everybody else.

I want to tell you something else about fear of success, which is different to other types of fear… it’s a really, really good hider. I cannot tell you how many times I have worked with people who have started off the conversation with...

Oh, I don’t like dancing, or,

Going to a spa doesn’t really appeal to me, or,

I’m not going swimming, I don’t like what it does to my hair, or,

I’ve never wanted to eat Indian food.

So sometimes we do something else, until finally, they try it. Then they turn around and say…

Oh, I’ve always wanted to dance, or,

I never thought I could go to a spa, or,

Oh, this reminds me of when I was a kid and I used to love swimming. I don’t care about my hair! or,

This is lovely, I’ve always wondered what Indian food would be like.

But something was stopping them from seeing what they really wanted, like blinkers on a horse stop the horse from seeing anything that’s not right in front of them.

So sometimes, when we escape fear of success, it’s so obvious, so simple and we look back and say, Oh, wow! Now I understand! and we have what we call a light bulb or an aha moment, because it’s like someone switched on a light bulb and we can see things clearly.

I’ve been in those same shoes, thinking I had no interest in what was going on right in front of me, just taking part for no real reason… and then I would realise, ‘That’s why I came here.’ But I hid it from myself, because if I had really focused on it, I wouldn’t have been able to deal with it.

So, there’s a double-edged sword to shedding light on our fear of success, to turning on the light bulb. Sometimes it’s like looking at the sun, it’s too bright and we can’t quite cope with it, but then other times we need that little bit of daylight to help us to see the journey, to help us to see the path.

I never said it was going to be easy.

Forgive me if this is a bit confusing, or mysterious or even mystical. Fear of success is all of those things at times.

Because of that, I find a really good way of working through it, is working with our gut, with our heart, with our intuition. Logic and straightforward thinking is great, but sometimes it doesn’t work for fear of success. I find when we listen to our intuition, our gut, our heart, that’s a lot more powerful, more effective, because it comes from inside, it comes from us, and our own intuition is usually the best tool to get us to where we really want to go.

Another thing I want to explain is that success changes all the time and it’s different to what we might call achievement.

So, for example, I have a degree in Maths, and when I sat down to do the exams to get that degree I had studied and studied and studied. I knew all the answers, and I passed the exams and I got my degree. Then I left university. Now if I open up an old box, I might find an old Maths exam paper. When I look at that Maths test, I can tell you, I don’t understand a word of it – it looks really weird and I don’t have a clue what it’s about. But I still have my Maths degree – that’s an achievement.

But a doctor, well they get their exams, but then they have to keep studying, keep learning, keep remembering because they have to know the answer when they treat patients. To be successful, they have to practice all the time.

Another example would be someone who wins a gold medal at the Olympics. Nobody expects you to maintain that level of athleticism all the time! After the Olympics, even Usain Bolt says, I’m going on holiday now! I’m gonna have a rest! so he can enjoy life in a different way. Which is a different kind of success, being able to let go of training for the Olympics and just relax, let go and enjoy life. But he is always a gold medal winner.

The key to fear of success is that fear of success is also fear of feeling alive, because success is when we feel alive, when we feel happy and joyful, even if we’re doing something very difficult, very painful, very uncomfortable.

I often talk about hiking, and my pilgrimage when I hiked through Spain, through mountains. There were days when I finished and I was bruised and beaten up and I felt terrible and I felt crushed, but at the same time I was also filled with incredible joy because I had completed that stage. Nobody can take that achievement away. But now I’ve done it, I don’t want to keep going back and doing it again – success for me now is to do something new – to do this – to write this book and share it with the world.

Emotional Basics

I’m going to use all of my incredible wisdom from travelling around the world and studying with the most amazing teachers to teach you some things about emotions, because we’re going to be using our emotions as diagnostics in the next chapter.

But before we can do that, we need to get rid of some bad thinking or bad habits around emotions.

During the coronavirus crisis, I’ve seen so much written about meditation, about mindfulness, about emotions, about reactions, about states of mind… and a lot of it was nonsense, so I need to clear up some of that junk before we get started.

One of the most important chats I ever had was with an incredible Buddhist monk in Bhutan. He invited us to ask him questions and somebody in our group asked, How can I meditate?

He replied, Mmmm. Meditation? Then he said, Really, you in the West, you shouldn’t try this, because you always get it wrong. He explained that we, in the West, often use meditation to hurt ourselves.

He asked us if we knew what the purpose of Buddhism was. Me, being a know it all, put my hand up and said, To get rid of notions.

And this very wise Bhutanese monk looked at me and said, I see that you, like me, have been polluted with teaching.

What he meant was, when we start to learn, that knowledge, that information can sometimes get hold of us and it sometimes uses us. As someone once said, A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

When we meditate, some of the greatest trainings are really about letting go of thought, silencing the mind, and stopping that knowledge from getting tangled up in our heads and corrupting our way of being. We have to let go, we have to clear out any notions, any ideas that we’ve been taught that aren’t helping us right now.

Meditation is incredibly useful, not just in order to be grateful and joyful when we’re