09 – Get Past Guilt and Shame

Do You Feel Guilty About Success?

One of the worst things we can tell ourselves about accomplishments and success is that we don’t deserve it – and then feel guilty about it. These feelings may have been plaguing you since childhood and kept you from the success you’re very capable of.

Rather than celebrating your success, you may feel unworthy or afraid that you’ll come across as bragging. But when you’re an entrepreneur and in the business of helping others, your accomplishments should be celebrated.

If your potential customers don’t see you as a success, they won’t have much of a reason to follow your advice. You may even take your feelings of guilt so far as to give away your advice and information – great for the freebie seekers, but bad for your business.

That doesn’t mean that everything has to have a price on it. Successful entrepreneurs usually go the extra mile and provide more solutions and guidance for their customers than necessary. But it should be your choice, not a result from feeling guilty.

Feeling Bad Doesn’t Serve Your Customers’ Best Interests

When guilt about your success or how much money you make overwhelms you, it may cause you to abandon your career pursuit of helping others. That leaves your customer base that you worked so hard to build without a leader they can depend upon.

If guilt and unworthy feelings are something you contend with, it’s time to nip these in the bud before they grow into an obstacle you can’t overcome. Think about why you feel guilt. Did someone – a customer or loved one – make you feel guilty or berate you for wanting to better your life?

Did You Grow Up Thinking Rich People Were Bad?

Or could these feelings come from childhood experiences? Unless you find a way to bury the guilt and remove it from your thought process entirely, you won’t be able to fully help your customers succeed – and you will fail, too.

You must have done a number of things right to be at the place you are now. Others are seeking your advice and experience because you’ve obviously accomplished enough to be considered worthy of offering solutions for their problems.

They view you as a person to look up to and emulate. If you let your customers down by becoming indecisive and letting them down, you will lose the business that could eventually make you a success.

It’s Okay to Enjoy Your Success

No one has the right to make you feel unworthy of success. Don’t let others beat you down and make you feel that you just got lucky with your success – that it wasn’t a matter of your knowledge, drive, and hard work that led you to triumph.

And even if you did luck out in some areas, you had the good fortune to know when to take advantage of a situation. As an entrepreneur, you have to tout your own successes.

This doesn’t mean you’re bragging, but that you’re stating the facts. You are good at what you do and you do have the knowledge and experience to help others gain their own success.

Sometimes it’s difficult to fend off criticism from others – especially those close to you. But you have a choice on how to respond. You can either sink deeper in guilty feelings and apologize for the success you’ve had or celebrate what you have and do what makes you happy.

Remember: “Your value does not decrease based on someone’s inability to see your worth.” ~ Unknown.