People often say that success comes with a price. Sometimes, the price is having to deal with other people making you feel guilty. If we take action and control our journey, we can achieve the success we desire.
However, this tends to attract negative attention and comments from others. These negative people may have insecurities that may hinder you from taking action, and if you are not careful, they will stop you from taking action.
For some of us, these negative comments can make us feel guilty about doing our best, so we ‘dumb it down’ for their benefit, or worse still do nothing in case of feeling worse than we already do. Accommodating their guilt-tripping can derail you from achieving the success you desire for yourself.
There are different reasons why we let other people place guilt and shame on our successes and our efforts. Comments from naysayers can easily shake your self-confidence if you let them. Their intention, either consciously or subconsciously, is to stop you, your actions, and your momentum. They don’t want you to achieve the success they don’t have.
Another possible reason why we feel guilty for taking action is the isolation we may experience once we succeed. Humans are like wolves – we tend to move in packs. Being separated from your pack can be a scary place to be. That’s why we simply tend to stick with the group. However, the people in our pack may be the very reason we are not achieving the goals we have set for ourselves.
If we seek success, we run the risk of being isolated from everyone else. Think of it as running a race, and you are the fastest runner. As you dominate the track while others are slugging behind you, there’s no one else right there with you but yourself – and for some, the thought of isolation can intimidate them from taking action. It can make them fall back just to stay with the group.
Stop Feeling Guilty and Keep Going
You must stop feeling guilty and stop factoring in everyone else’s emotions. Their negativity will not help you at all. Negativity does not add value to your actions nor motivates you to keep going. However, that can certainly be difficult if it comes from the people close to you.
When faced with negativity, it is easy to forget the reason why you set your goals in the first place. If you forget your reason ‘why’ you will not take further action and keep going. Whenever you feel lost, you can always go back to your why. Knowing the purpose behind your goals can motivate you and look past feeling guilty about other people’s inaction.
As you look back on your why, and your reasons for taking action, it is also an excellent time to check how far you have come in your journey. Do you want to waste all your efforts and hard work just to appease others? You certainly don’t want to be appeasing them to make you stop feeling guilty.
It’s their problem, not yours, and don’t make it your problem! Knowing how far you have come needs to be rewarded. If you reward yourself, instead of beating yourself up, you will be motivated to continue working towards your goal.
Build Strong Connections
People who don’t feel happy about your success don’t add value to your life. Pure and simple. Therefore, it’s time to assess the kind of relationship that you have with them and begin to build more meaningful connections with the right people. Build connections with the people who have your best interests at heart. The people who are driven and passionate like you.
Building connections with like-minded people allows you to have a positive support system. These are the people who are on your side. They feel happy about your success and want to see you achieve. You can count on their support to push and motivate you towards your goals, not pull you back and load you with guilt.
Sometimes, all we can do about people with a defeatist attitude is admit that we can’t control their opinions, no matter what we do. They will always have something negative to say. We simply have to accept reality and move on.
‘A lion never loses sleep over the opinions of the sheep.’
– Unknown
As we begin to experience success, we expect the people around us to feel excited and proud of what we have done, but that is not always the case. Other people’s negative feelings don’t have to play a factor in your success. Keep in mind that the naysayers’ opinions do not reflect who you are, but rather it is a reflection of their insecurities. People love to throw rocks at things that shine, so keep on shining and never let them make you feel bad for doing so.
