The Success Shadow: When Growth Feels Unsafe

Welcome to Dawn Avenue Era, where we talk all things millionaire mindset and scaling strategy so you can think, feel, and scale like the top 1%. I'm Dawn McGruer, the business growth coach, Forbes mentor, and serial entrepreneur. Each week, we'll ditch the fluff, dive into the neuroscience of success, and share the good, the bad, and the ugly of building wealth, impact, and freedom. If you're ready to play bigger and rewrite the rules of business, you're in the right place.

Let's go. So today we're going to be talking about something that is rarely discussed in business circles, and this is the shadow side of success. Because here's the truth: scaling isn't always pure excitement. You know, there's challenges along the way, and sometimes the very growth you've been working towards can trigger fear, or self-sabotage, or old emotional wounds.

And what happens is, is that we have the success shadow. So this is what the success shadow means and what I mean by it. Because if you've ever found yourself, for instance, pulling back, and it's at a time that you found things were just going really well, and you were on this kind of scaling trajectory and everything was positive, well, in this episode, I'm going to help you understand why sometimes we go into these negative patterns and self-sabotage, because this is all about how to move forward without burning out. And, you know, we've all been in stages in our careers where we've hit burnout, where we're pushing so hard, but we're so tired, and we just feel that everything is weighing us down.

So the first part of this is all about why scaling can feel unsafe. And from a purely sort of strategic perspective, scaling is about systems and people and offers. But from a psychodynamic point of view and perspective, it's about identity and safety and also worth. And self-worth shows up a lot in the founder journey with CEOs at all different stages, because what happens is, is that even when things are going amazingly well, like rapid growth, this often brings things like, you know, more visibility.

It will bring more responsibility and more certainty because we have bigger revenues, we have more money coming in consistently, and we have cash in the bank. But here is where it gets really kind of interesting, because your subconscious doesn't measure safety by logic. And what it does is it measures it by familiarity. So if success is something like a new aspect to your life or something that is not your new norm, what happens is, is your brain goes, Well, this is risky.

I've not experienced this before, and I'm very uncertain about it. So all of your old fears start to resurface. And these are things like it could be the fear of being judged, or fear of letting people down, or the fear of not being able to maintain this standard, or what happens if it all falls apart. So this is often the thing that I see when I am working with CEOs and founders in the initial stages, because we've addressed some of the mindset, we've broken some of the patterns, and we've got over the immediate challenges, and we're now into scaling, and we are scaling fast.

And with anything like that, any change, then that equals perceived risk, because we're like, well, what happens next? This is unfamiliar territory. I have no idea what the next stage of this chapter is. So this is why CEOs sometimes hit an income plateau.

I see it so often, and a lot of founders come to me and go, Dawn, I did really well. It was going really well, and then it just stopped. And this isn't because of their strategy or that anything is actually broken. This is around the fact that their nervous system is trying to protect them.

And, you know, this is all kind of like, well, look, there's a perceived danger here, so my nervous system is going to step in, and we're just going to halt, and everything's going to be okay. So when we look at the next stage of, like, how do we get past this? And I talk a lot about neuroscience and habits and, you know, quantum psychology and psychodynamics, but Japanese wisdom has played a massive foundational piece in everything I do, in scaling businesses, helping clients generate huge wealth in their businesses, you know, from scaling to selling to going on to more philanthropic activities. So the next piece here is I want to share a little bit about Japanese wisdom and how this can be translated into the business journey, because this is something a lot of people go, I don't understand how what Japanese wisdom would have to do with strategy.

But basically, gaman. This is a Japanese wisdom, a principle all about your enduring with purpose. And this is where, when people talk about things like alignment, that we start to get into the nitty gritty, because when we're doing something and we're scaling, we start to doubt what we're doing and we start to question why we're doing it. So in the Japanese culture, there's a beautiful principle, Gaman, which means enduring difficult situations with dignity and purpose.

So it's not about pushing through and, you know, at all costs this must happen, because this is where burnout happens. It's about holding steady and staying really aligned with your why and focusing in on that and making grounded decisions even when your discomfort is through the roof, okay? Because it's not about, you know, really kind of just leaning into, well, this is the goal, so this is what I've got to do, because that sort of process, that sort of narrative is something that will burn you out quick, and it's difficult to come back from. What we want to do is head that off at the pass.

And when applied to scaling, Gaman is about doing things differently. It's about staying committed to your vision when your emotions are telling you to retreat, to go back, to go back to safety. It's about building resilience through purposeful action, not reactive hustle, okay? So think about this.

You know, when we apply principles like this, we're changing our thought process. We are remembering who we are, identity and purpose and why and mission and vision, and reconnecting to this. The deeper we reconnect, the easier it gets. And with Gaman, it's about enduring the stretch phase, but knowing in your heart of hearts that it's just a natural part of the expansion process and it will happen again.

But having these tools in place will make it easier because if you think about it. When you started your business, we had passion, we had obviously conviction behind what we did. We wanted to change lives, but we didn't necessarily know how to grow and scale a business. I certainly didn't.

It took me a long while, three years, to kind of get out of my initial feast and famine cycle when I was 21 in my first business and learn how to build resilience, how to navigate pitfalls and challenges, how to empower myself to actually step up as a true CEO rather than staying in this sort of freelancer self-employed mentality. And that was a key difference. And this kind of takes us on to the sort of final part of this piece where we're talking about integrating shadow work into strategy. And a lot of people will be like, Oh, you know, Dawn, this is a bit woo-woo.

It really isn't. It's something that if you've never, you know, gone down this route or explored it, just be open because this part is often the biggest challenge I see in over 80% of entrepreneurs, because your shadow in psychodynamic terms is the part of yourself that you're kind of avoiding or you deny or you're, like, suppressing. What we're trying to do is you want to start addressing things like the parts of the fear that you need to pay particular attention to, or it could be that you are reducing or suppressing fear and just being in complete avoidance. It could be that it's the perfectionist part in us that's, you know, we're terrified of making mistakes, so we don't move forward.

Or it's the people pleaser in us that we're afraid of, you know, upsetting clients. Now, if you ignore these things and you push them away and you suppress them, they'll quietly just be in the background dictating all of your decisions.

You know, and this is not where we want to be. We want to be the leader. So when we think about how to integrate shadow work into your kind of scaling plan and your day-to-day CEO and founder plan, we have to think about your identity and your triggers. So I want you to really be aware of noticing when you feel resistance with something and procrastination, or you might get, like, sudden urges to play small and shrink.

And this is a common thing. I've been here. I notice it. I see the patterns in myself.

When something gets too big and feels like it's tumbling out of control, I sometimes want to just pull back. I have to let go. And when I feel fear, and I've said this a lot, is that you need to name the fear. So is it a fear of, like, well, visibility, or is it a fear of rejection, or it could be, like, a fear of failure?

What is that fear? And then we need to be really open to reframing the risk. So I talk a lot about risk and taking calculated risk, but not being, you know, blasé in what we're doing. We have to have a risk with a plan.

So I want you to kind of ask yourself the question and think, well, how can I endure this discomfort with purpose? And that's Garmin in true action, because if we get that right, we're like, well, look, this is happening. This is exactly my why, and this is my mission and my vision. I am true.

I feel aligned. It's just going to be a period of time that I know will subside, then we'll move through it. We don't want to stay in that state forever. And again, this next one is about strategic pacing.

This is something that if you've been in the corporate world that you will be aware of, but this is a slightly different perspective or lens on it. And what we're doing here is we're aligning your growth plan with your nervous system capacity. Now, the nervous system capacity tends to be the bit that you've maybe not seen so much in the corporate world, and that definitely was lacking in mine. Because what I did is I took some of my corporate beliefs into my entrepreneurial world and burnt out very quickly.

What we're doing here is understanding that scaling is a marathon and it's not a sprint. It's something that is going to grow and evolve, and will grow and evolve with it. It's not something that stays static. So I really want you to kind of remember, like, the next time that you go into this feeling to recognize your shadow.

So if you feel yourself hesitating and you know you're at the edge, you're at the teetering point of that next level of success, like, pause and ask yourself the question, like, is this a genuine strategic concern, or is it my shadow, success shadow talking, or is it my success shadow talking? So ask yourself, is this a genuine strategic concern, or is it my success shadow talking? So if it's your shadow, meet it with compassion. Don't just try and suppress it.

Bring it in with light and move forward with purpose and accept it. Name the fear. And embrace it, you know. And this is the only way that you're going to kind of address some of these fears, is not pushing them away, bringing them in close, accepting them, recognizing them, and moving on anyway.

So if you want to learn more about this, then you can definitely find a huge amount of episodes in Dawn of a New Era. Please make sure that if you've enjoyed this podcast, help me in my mission and vision to reach the top 1% of podcasts globally. We're at number three at the moment, teetering at number two, and just give me a quick rate and review on your favorite podcast player. It would be much appreciated.

And again, come and follow me on your favorite social media channel. So again, I can't wait to meet you on the next episode, and I will be sharing more of my millionaire mindset and scaling strategies and talking about Japanese wisdom, psychodynamics, and neuroscience, with a little splash of quantum psychology.