Have you ever felt like you stopped yourself from reaching your full potential, not because of the fear of failure, but because of the fear of what success might bring?

Many of us focus so intensely on avoiding failure that we overlook a critical, yet often hidden, obstacle—the fear of success. This fear can manifest in doubts about our ability to handle new responsibilities or anxieties about how success may alter our current lives.

Imagine waking up one day to find that all you’ve ever dreamed of is within your grasp, only to be paralyzed by thoughts like, "Am I ready for this?", "What will my family think?", or "Can I sustain this success?" These doubts can be crippling.

In this episode of Unshakable Habits, our guest Adam Jablin explains how to recognize and overcome this fear. By reframing your mindset and taking actionable steps, you can break free from the mental barriers holding you back.

By the Time You Finish Listening, You'll Discover:

• Learn the signs that indicate you might be fearing success, not failure, and how this fear impacts your life.
• Understand the difference between the fear of success and the fear of the unknown, and how to reframe it to work in your favor.
• Gain practical advice on navigating the path to success, ensuring you're mentally prepared to handle it when it arrives.

This week on Unshakable Habits, host Stephen Box dives deep with Adam Jablin to uncover the transformative journey from fear to freedom. Trust us—you won’t want to miss a minute of it.

Connect with Adam: https://adamjablin.com/

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Stephen Box: 00:00:00

If you woke up tomorrow morning and you had literally

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everything that you had ever dreamed of, you were the ultimate

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success story, would you be happy?

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On the surface, that sounds like kind of a silly question, but the reality is for a

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lot of us, the idea of actually achieving all the things that we think we want.

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Creates a lot of anxiety, a lot of doubt about our ability to handle the success.

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And that is why on today's episode we are talking about the fear of success

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in part three of our interview series with our special guest this week, Mr.

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Adam Jablin.

Stephen Box: 00:00:42

So that is coming up here on Unshakable Habits.

Intro: 00:00:48

The right habits can help you have it all.

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More time, better health, improved relationships, and less stress.

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But most people lack the tools to stick with those habits

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long enough to see results.

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That is about to change.

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Welcome to Unshakable Habits with your host, Stephen Box.

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It's time to take your habits from unsustainable to unshakable.

Stephen Box: 00:01:13

Welcome back.

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This is episode number 75 of Unshakable Habits.

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I am your host, Stephen Box, and today we are talking about the fear of

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success and more specifically how it can create a lot of anxiety and doubt

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And our ability to handle that success.

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And this is part three of our interview series with Adam Jablin.

Stephen Box: 00:01:39

And if you missed yesterday's episode, Adam was talking about

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overcoming the fear of change.

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And you're going to definitely want to check that episode out because we ended

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the episode with, I think, probably.

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One of the best pieces of advice I've ever heard anybody give on dealing with change,

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So make sure you go back and check that out.

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But Adam, let's talk today about overcoming this fear of success.

Stephen Box: 00:02:04

And the first question I want to ask you is, how does someone start to

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recognize that they even have this fear?

Adam Jablin: 00:02:12

I think when I've worked with clients and groups, what I see

Adam Jablin: 00:02:18

is they jump into that next reality.

Adam Jablin: 00:02:20

They jump into that, that higher calling.

Adam Jablin: 00:02:23

And they start telling me their fears right away.

Adam Jablin: 00:02:26

What does it look like in the family?

Adam Jablin: 00:02:27

What does it look like in my work life?

Adam Jablin: 00:02:29

How much hours and times am I going to have to dedicate this?

Adam Jablin: 00:02:32

what does it look like financially?

Adam Jablin: 00:02:34

more, success.

Adam Jablin: 00:02:37

Doesn't necessarily mean abundance, right?

Adam Jablin: 00:02:40

So as you grow as a company, there are, there's more invoices that come in.

Adam Jablin: 00:02:45

There's more, there's more employees to pay.

Adam Jablin: 00:02:48

There's more, there's more responsibilities.

Adam Jablin: 00:02:51

And what I see is they're fearing all of the newness, it's not the actual success.

Adam Jablin: 00:02:58

they're fearing the new, they're fearing the unknown.

Adam Jablin: 00:03:02

And since there's still them.

Adam Jablin: 00:03:04

And they're not there yet.

Adam Jablin: 00:03:06

They can't calibrate.

Adam Jablin: 00:03:09

They can't calibrate.

Adam Jablin: 00:03:11

It's not actually fear of success.

Adam Jablin: 00:03:14

It really isn't.

Adam Jablin: 00:03:15

It's fear of the unknown.

Stephen Box: 00:03:16

I think that's a good reframe, right?

Stephen Box: 00:03:19

Where for a lot of people, it's the fear, not of the success itself, but

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on their ability to handle the success, because they're not sure what it's going

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to look like, it's a whole new area.

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It's if you make a hundred thousand dollars a year.

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and you get, an opportunity to make 500, 000 a year.

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Those are two completely different expectation sets, at least

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mentally, of what's expected of you.

Stephen Box: 00:03:48

Absolutely.

Adam Jablin: 00:03:49

So you start playing with these false realities, and putting on

Adam Jablin: 00:03:53

these false burdens and these false responsibilities, It's a gradual process.

Adam Jablin: 00:04:00

the fear of success is truly the fear of unknown and really fear of

Adam Jablin: 00:04:04

what's going to be expected of me and sometimes the fear of judgment.

Stephen Box: 00:04:08

So I see a lot of similarities between the fear

Stephen Box: 00:04:11

of change, which we talked about yesterday and the fear of success.

Stephen Box: 00:04:17

Because they're really about, they're both about the fear of the unknown, right?

Stephen Box: 00:04:23

What one is more focused on maybe the fear of changes in the things that you do

Stephen Box: 00:04:29

know versus, that'd be the fear of change.

Stephen Box: 00:04:33

And then the fear of success is really more about just the complete unknown.

Stephen Box: 00:04:37

But outside of that difference, is there anything else is different about?

Adam Jablin: 00:04:41

No, not a thing because it centers in the mind.

Adam Jablin: 00:04:47

And you're not being present in dealing with in the now, you can

Adam Jablin: 00:04:51

dramatize, you can add little stories of what would look different.

Adam Jablin: 00:04:56

But again, None of those are reality.

Adam Jablin: 00:04:59

So the fear stems in the mind, and you will feel what you're thinking Every

Adam Jablin: 00:05:05

single time that's scientifically proven.

Adam Jablin: 00:05:08

That's not an Adam Jablin thing.

Adam Jablin: 00:05:09

Yeah, I know many people like no I woke up with this fear.

Adam Jablin: 00:05:12

I woke up with this.

Adam Jablin: 00:05:13

I woke up with my gut of course But I would love to be able to be

Adam Jablin: 00:05:18

God and say, what were you thinking about before you went to bed?

Adam Jablin: 00:05:21

Or what have you really been thinking about the last seven days?

Adam Jablin: 00:05:24

And what have your actions looked like the last seven days?

Adam Jablin: 00:05:27

It can be, did somebody really?

Adam Jablin: 00:05:30

Have everything go well for them.

Adam Jablin: 00:05:32

Their kids are healthy.

Adam Jablin: 00:05:33

They're healthy.

Adam Jablin: 00:05:34

They have a connection to a higher power.

Adam Jablin: 00:05:36

They prayed for loved ones.

Adam Jablin: 00:05:38

They've taken care of their, all their emotional and true responsibilities

Adam Jablin: 00:05:42

that, and, you know, just out of nowhere on the seventh, they just

Adam Jablin: 00:05:45

woke up with a paralyzing fear.

Adam Jablin: 00:05:46

And if they did work up with that paralyzing fear, is it some connection

Adam Jablin: 00:05:50

to a higher source saying something needs to be auto corrected, but

Adam Jablin: 00:05:52

it's going to stem from the mind.

Adam Jablin: 00:05:54

if the brain's dead, have you ever seen, I, listen, I deal with alcohol addiction.

Adam Jablin: 00:05:58

Have you ever dealt with that?

Adam Jablin: 00:05:59

When the brain is done, but the body keeps going, nothing's going on.

Adam Jablin: 00:06:05

That's when the doctors say, how long do we want to leave them on life support for?

Stephen Box: 00:06:09

Yeah.

Stephen Box: 00:06:09

I think that the mental aspect of it is so huge because it's like

Stephen Box: 00:06:14

you said, there is this false reality that we start to live in.

Stephen Box: 00:06:18

And I think a big part of this is that fear judgment.

Adam Jablin: 00:06:22

Absolutely.

Adam Jablin: 00:06:23

Fear of judgment.

Adam Jablin: 00:06:25

Fear of not getting what we want.

Adam Jablin: 00:06:28

Fear of losing what we have.

Adam Jablin: 00:06:31

Fear.

Stephen Box: 00:06:32

when we talk about This fear of the unknown and being judged

Stephen Box: 00:06:36

and worrying if we're going to be good enough and all those kind of things.

Stephen Box: 00:06:42

one area where this shows up for people is not when it's completely unknown, but

Stephen Box: 00:06:48

when they've actually tried something.

Stephen Box: 00:06:51

put theirself out there and they've actually had failure.

Stephen Box: 00:06:55

so the idea here it's still this fear of

Stephen Box: 00:06:58

Not being able to handle it, but it's actually based in the

Stephen Box: 00:07:01

reality that when they got there before they couldn't handle it.

Stephen Box: 00:07:05

what advice would you give to that person?

Adam Jablin: 00:07:08

Oh, I would give them the biggest hug, a kiss

Adam Jablin: 00:07:10

on the cheek, male or female.

Adam Jablin: 00:07:12

and tell them that's the process.

Adam Jablin: 00:07:16

failure is where it's all at.

Adam Jablin: 00:07:20

You have to fail and fail and fail in order to succeed.

Adam Jablin: 00:07:25

I have not met anyone that accomplished their goals or dreams,

Adam Jablin: 00:07:30

their wonders, without failure.

Adam Jablin: 00:07:33

I'll give you an example.

Adam Jablin: 00:07:34

So in recovery, I go to, I'm a, I'm very proud to still be part of a 12

Adam Jablin: 00:07:39

step fellowship, have been for 18 years.

Adam Jablin: 00:07:42

Now that's where I just focus on my personal recovery.

Adam Jablin: 00:07:44

That's not where I do my coaching.

Adam Jablin: 00:07:45

that's just my own personal thing and I'm very proud of it.

Adam Jablin: 00:07:48

And when I surrendered, I got one, they call it a white shit, right?

Adam Jablin: 00:07:53

It was my one surrender chip.

Adam Jablin: 00:07:55

And many people, when they go into recovery, they relapse.

Adam Jablin: 00:07:58

They'll get several of those.

Adam Jablin: 00:07:59

The thing is that was not my one time.

Adam Jablin: 00:08:01

Like I tried quitting drinking and drugging on my own many times.

Adam Jablin: 00:08:06

You know what I mean?

Adam Jablin: 00:08:07

That was, I call that my surrender trip.

Adam Jablin: 00:08:10

That's when I surrender.

Adam Jablin: 00:08:12

And when you surrender, you stop fighting.

Adam Jablin: 00:08:16

And when you stop fighting, there's no failure.

Adam Jablin: 00:08:20

let's use your favorite athlete.

Adam Jablin: 00:08:22

Is that okay?

Adam Jablin: 00:08:23

Yeah, absolutely.

Adam Jablin: 00:08:24

He doesn't believe in failure.

Adam Jablin: 00:08:26

Doesn't believe in it at all.

Adam Jablin: 00:08:29

he was, and he was so candid about it.

Adam Jablin: 00:08:31

He was like, okay, so you lose.

Adam Jablin: 00:08:34

He goes, you lose.

Adam Jablin: 00:08:35

Guess what I do the next day?

Adam Jablin: 00:08:37

You get up, you watch film.

Adam Jablin: 00:08:39

You study it, you go play the next game.

Adam Jablin: 00:08:41

He goes, okay, you win.

Adam Jablin: 00:08:43

Okay, guess what I do?

Adam Jablin: 00:08:45

I get up, I watch film, I practice, nothing was different.

Adam Jablin: 00:08:49

So failure is when you stop.

Adam Jablin: 00:08:51

If you don't stop, you're not failing.

Adam Jablin: 00:08:55

Even if you change course a little, you're not failing.

Adam Jablin: 00:08:58

Many times when airplanes are going from wherever you go, Arizona to Miami,

Adam Jablin: 00:09:02

whatever you want to make up, They have to change courses many times.

Adam Jablin: 00:09:07

They don't care about the course, they care about the outcome.

Adam Jablin: 00:09:10

They care about the

Stephen Box: 00:09:10

destination.

Stephen Box: 00:09:11

I think so many of us, we get focused on this idea of the outcome, right?

Stephen Box: 00:09:17

And we think that there's a set way to get to the outcome.

Stephen Box: 00:09:21

And that we have to get all the steps perfect to get to the outcome.

Stephen Box: 00:09:25

But the reality is, once you start to realize that you actually

Stephen Box: 00:09:29

have full control over the actual outcome most of the time.

Stephen Box: 00:09:32

And that all you can control is the process, but the only part of the

Stephen Box: 00:09:37

process you can actually control is your behaviors, your mindset, your actions.

Stephen Box: 00:09:43

And once you come to that realization, it leads to that

Stephen Box: 00:09:48

surrender that you're talking about.

Adam Jablin: 00:09:52

Man, my surrender was from the deepness of my soul.

Adam Jablin: 00:09:57

It was from the deepness of my soul.

Adam Jablin: 00:10:00

And I'll be honest with you, I actually have to surrender every day.

Adam Jablin: 00:10:05

I really do.

Adam Jablin: 00:10:07

It is the beginning of my day in the beginning of my prayer before

Adam Jablin: 00:10:11

my meditation, because I'm human.

Adam Jablin: 00:10:14

I'm wired like every other human being.

Adam Jablin: 00:10:16

I want to visualize, I want to create, and I want the outcome I want.

Adam Jablin: 00:10:21

And God's taken me this far on his plan.

Adam Jablin: 00:10:27

I have to surrender now what my goals and dreams and aspirations are to do his will.

Adam Jablin: 00:10:32

I want to shoot you straight.

Adam Jablin: 00:10:35

We're bringing the Michael Jordan, Kobe stuff in it.

Adam Jablin: 00:10:38

We live in a very strange age for me personally.

Adam Jablin: 00:10:41

Okay.

Adam Jablin: 00:10:43

47 years old.

Adam Jablin: 00:10:44

And I've always been wired like this.

Adam Jablin: 00:10:47

I've always wired to help people always wired to, to guide people.

Adam Jablin: 00:10:51

I was the kid where I can knock you out football and I would just

Adam Jablin: 00:10:54

wrap you up with a proper tackle.

Adam Jablin: 00:10:56

When I was boxing and I was good, I would show my opponent what I did after and

Adam Jablin: 00:11:00

my coaches would scream at me and yell at me and make me feel very feminine.

Adam Jablin: 00:11:04

It made me feel feminine.

Adam Jablin: 00:11:05

Although I'm masculine.

Adam Jablin: 00:11:06

And now in today's day and age.

Adam Jablin: 00:11:08

Everybody wants to be a coach and it weirds me out because I'm wired

Adam Jablin: 00:11:13

like, I don't want to be the coach.

Adam Jablin: 00:11:16

I want to, you want to know my ego?

Adam Jablin: 00:11:18

I want to be Michael.

Adam Jablin: 00:11:20

I want to be Kobe.

Adam Jablin: 00:11:21

I don't want to be Phil Jackson.

Adam Jablin: 00:11:22

I am Phil Jackson.

Adam Jablin: 00:11:23

It is what I have been created to do, but my ego, I want the ball in my hands.

Adam Jablin: 00:11:29

I want the sneaker contract.

Adam Jablin: 00:11:31

I want my tongue out.

Adam Jablin: 00:11:32

I want to hit the winning game shot.

Adam Jablin: 00:11:34

I watched the last dance from Michael, not for Phil Jackson,

Adam Jablin: 00:11:38

so it's a very strange age for me that everybody wants to be a coach.

Adam Jablin: 00:11:42

And I like to check people's motives on that.

Adam Jablin: 00:11:45

We want to really be a coach and really help people with their lives.

Adam Jablin: 00:11:48

Or do they want a lot of attention on, social media and Instagram and

Adam Jablin: 00:11:53

reels and find a way to make money.

Stephen Box: 00:11:55

Yeah, I can relate to that because I'm really the same right

Stephen Box: 00:11:58

where there's a part of me that's I want to make, 10 million a year and

Stephen Box: 00:12:03

I want to have this huge business and I want to do all these things.

Stephen Box: 00:12:05

And like you said, I want to be Michael Jordan.

Stephen Box: 00:12:07

I want to be Kobe Bryant.

Stephen Box: 00:12:09

But at the end of the day, if I get a big check, it's nice,

Stephen Box: 00:12:14

but it doesn't fulfill me.

Stephen Box: 00:12:16

What fulfills me is when I'm working with a client and I'm coaching them.

Stephen Box: 00:12:21

Or if I'm having a conversation and I can give a great piece of advice

Stephen Box: 00:12:25

or shift a perspective for somebody.

Stephen Box: 00:12:27

Or I get on here and I get to have conversations with people like you

Stephen Box: 00:12:30

and then share it out with the world.

Stephen Box: 00:12:33

That's the stuff that fulfills me.

Stephen Box: 00:12:35

The other stuff is nice, but that's not what fulfills me.

Stephen Box: 00:12:40

It's not saying that we can't have both.

Stephen Box: 00:12:42

I would honestly, if I, if money wasn't the object, if I could just do whatever.

Stephen Box: 00:12:48

I would probably just coach people for free all day long.

Stephen Box: 00:12:51

that's how much I love coaching people, but I have bills to pay.

Stephen Box: 00:12:55

So I do have to charge for it.

Adam Jablin: 00:12:58

Yeah.

Adam Jablin: 00:12:59

that's the law of giving and receiving too.

Adam Jablin: 00:13:01

money is just an energy exchange.

Adam Jablin: 00:13:04

That's all it is.

Adam Jablin: 00:13:05

if you and I were born, around Christ's time, it wouldn't be no, that's not true

Adam Jablin: 00:13:09

because they, that was Giblet, Caesars.

Adam Jablin: 00:13:11

But, it would be a barter system.

Adam Jablin: 00:13:12

you would coach them and they would give you milk or they would give you bread.

Adam Jablin: 00:13:15

You know what I mean?

Stephen Box: 00:13:16

It's an energy exchange.

Stephen Box: 00:13:19

Maybe I should just start charging people in tacos.

Stephen Box: 00:13:21

That might be Really good route to go here.

Stephen Box: 00:13:25

Delicious.

Stephen Box: 00:13:27

Alright, Adam, let's end with the simple question.

Stephen Box: 00:13:30

If someone is dealing with this fear of success, or really as we've more

Stephen Box: 00:13:36

appropriately said it, this fear of worrying that they're not going to be

Stephen Box: 00:13:40

able to handle when things get big, what's the one piece of advice you

Stephen Box: 00:13:45

can give them to walk away with today?

Stephen Box: 00:13:49

Get

Adam Jablin: 00:13:49

quiet.

Adam Jablin: 00:13:51

Get centered, realize that you're living in a false reality.

Adam Jablin: 00:13:57

That's not where you're at now and take the small steps to

Adam Jablin: 00:14:02

build and grow to your dreams.

Stephen Box: 00:14:05

so we're really taking, following up on your advice from

Stephen Box: 00:14:08

yesterday, we're really taking that idea of dancing with it and sampling

Stephen Box: 00:14:11

it and we're taking now the next step and we're starting to build.

Stephen Box: 00:14:16

Yeah.

Stephen Box: 00:14:18

I

Adam Jablin: 00:14:18

don't think any of us really want to win American Idol.

Adam Jablin: 00:14:20

you win American Idol and.

Adam Jablin: 00:14:23

You're famous for a day and no one hears from you again.

Adam Jablin: 00:14:26

And then there's another show, all of us want to be there for the long term.

Stephen Box: 00:14:33

Adam, that is a fantastic segway to allow us to

Stephen Box: 00:14:36

start to wrap up the show here.

Stephen Box: 00:14:38

Uh, guys, real quickly before I tell you what we are talking about tomorrow,

Stephen Box: 00:14:42

if you are getting a lot of value from Adam this week, make sure that you

Stephen Box: 00:14:46

share these episodes with somebody else so they can also get that value.

Stephen Box: 00:14:50

And if you're listening to us on Apple or Spotify right now, We'd greatly

Stephen Box: 00:14:54

appreciate if you could take a moment to leave us a five star review as well.

Stephen Box: 00:14:59

So tomorrow we're going to be talking about the fear of failure.

Stephen Box: 00:15:03

More specifically, how do you bounce back when you have failure?

Stephen Box: 00:15:08

Because as Adam just mentioned, we all want that long term success.

Stephen Box: 00:15:13

And one of the key elements of getting long term success is the ability to

Stephen Box: 00:15:20

bounce back when you do have failure.

Stephen Box: 00:15:22

Because as Adam said earlier, it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when.

Stephen Box: 00:15:26

We're all going to have failures part of the process.

Stephen Box: 00:15:29

So tomorrow we're going to teach you how to bounce back when that happens.

Stephen Box: 00:15:33

But until then, I remind you as always, that while none of us are born

Stephen Box: 00:15:37

unshakable, we can all become unshakable.