Fear Of Our Own Greatness (the Jonah Complex)

There is only one person in the world who can stop you from going far.

She’s the one who looks at you in the mirror every day.

We all have a funny way of putting up barriers and limiting our potential.

Frequently, we submit ourselves to a terrifying internal boycott, preventing us from growing up.

This is madness, isn’t it? You may already know very well what we are talking about. Now let’s see what is behind it all …

Why do we limit ourselves if we are born with great potential?

A few years ago,  Abraham Maslow theorized this phenomenon, under the name of “Jonah complex”.

This is a reference to a passage in the Bible, in which God entrusted Jonah with the mission of sending a message to Nineveh, but Jonah decided to flee, believing himself unable to do so.

Sometimes, during our lifetime, we make choices that do not lead us to success, even though we know very well that we are not taking the right direction.

If we act in this way, it is out of fear of our own greatness; this is a very cruel way of sabotaging us.

The Jonah complex results in demons such as fear and anxiety, thus hampering any possibility of achieving success.

In other words, you know what you are worth, what you are capable of achieving, you visualize yourself being successful, but you have a behavior that will only lead you to failure, and you know it. very well.

You cross the river to the valley of mediocrity for fear of not being up to it. You don’t value yourself, and you don’t know what it takes to get to the top.

For Maslow, just as we are afraid of the worst , we are also afraid of the best . In other words, we say to ourselves “I want everything and nothing at the same time, I prefer to stay where I am”.

These fears and other anxieties are a response to the fear of experiencing greater success than others, of facing the responsibilities of greatness, of not knowing how to move forward, of being arrogant, of failing, etc.

In other words, we have an obscure way of creating our own suffering.  It is not our success or on the contrary our sorrows that we prevent, but our own happiness.

Self-inflicted suffering and self-sabotage engender behaviors that are as unnecessary as they are harmful.

The only way to eradicate suicide is to face this demon of jealousy that is suffocating us.

With this demon comes the fear of not achieving our goals, or on the contrary, of getting there, but of being rejected by others because of their jealousy of our success.

Indeed, faced with the success of others there are two ways of reacting : either we envy them, or we admire them. Unfortunately, we tend to envy them more often …

In such a context, who can dare to stand out from the others and highlight their success?

Obviously, we cannot generalize, but unconsciously, we make the decision not to act and to be dependent on mediocrity.

We’re all building our own prisons. From one prison to another, the bars differ, as do the executioners and other supervisors who spy on our every move.

If we let it happen, our prison will end up becoming our coffin, on which an inscription will be enthroned that will show the world that we have led a life without pain and without glory.

We were buried wrapped in mediocrity and emotional comfort.

Our desires should not prevent us from keeping our feet on the ground.

Often, people make the mistake of overestimating themselves, and therefore end up burying themselves.

Most people who are really successful have found their balance, that is, they aim for the sky while not forgetting reality.

Anyone who fears their own fears cannot tolerate uncertainty.

We are all obsessed with certainty, because we do not believe in our ability to face what tomorrow has in store for us. We need to check everything, and check everything a thousand times.

We have a vital need to regain confidence in ourselves. It’s our way of tying into the obsessive thoughts that guide our every step towards the giant of success.

We are then not aware of the fact that by looking down, we allow ourselves the luxury of feeling inferior, which in reality will penalize us throughout our life.