Why Don’t We Trust Our Own Abilities: Jonah Complex
We have a strange way of limiting ourselves and our own potential. We are building a prison around us that prevents us from growing. Yes, we do it ourselves. Crazy, isn’t it? There is only one person in the world who can stop you from achieving anything. That person looks at you every day in the mirror.
Why do we limit our own innate potential?
Some years ago, Abraham Maslow named this pattern of behavior the Jonah Complex . The name refers to a biblical story in which God commands Jonah to convey his message to Nineveh. However, Jonah escapes as he does not believe he is capable of the task given. Sometimes we take the first steps of our journey in the completely wrong direction even if we know that success and success await at the very end of the path. This is because we fear our own greatness and as a result we end up sabotaging our own selves and our chances of success.
Fear and anxiety gnawing inside us are the demons that trigger the Jonah Complex. In other words, you know you’re valuable and able to do almost anything if you just visualize success in your mind, but you don’t dare take the first step and behave in a way that will only take you further away from your goals. You fall into mediocrity only because you’re afraid you’re not into it at all – because you’re afraid you’re not valuable. You are afraid of what you might find at the top of the mountain.
Maslow said we fear both the worst and the best possible outcome at the same time. In other words, we do not want to lose everything, but we also do not want to achieve everything; it is easier to stay in the familiar and safe current situation. We are afraid that we will achieve something more than others and that we will also have to take greater responsibility with it.
We are personally responsible for our own suffering. It’s not about preventing ourselves from succeeding, it’s about preventing ourselves from being happy. Such self-inflicted suffering, outright self-destruction, is completely unnecessary and truly harmful.
Overcoming such a harmful way of thinking and acting is challenging and requires moving outside the comfort zone. The only way to end sabotage is to face our own fears about the disappointments we may face as we pursue our goals.
We are building a prison for ourselves, the bars of which are our own fears, and at the door of which our own insecurities guard. If we stay in that prison, it will also become our grave. We live our lives without shame but also without honor, lulled into safe mediocrity.
When pursuing our dreams, it is also important to be able to find the right balance and keep our feet on the ground when needed. Many people belong to either end, i.e. set their goals far too high, or alternatively do not set them at all. However, when we observe successful people, we find that most of them have found the golden mean: they have sought the stars, yet remain “in this reality”.
Our own fear of success stems from an inability to tolerate uncertainty. We don’t believe in our own ability to face what lies ahead. We want to keep all the threads in our hands and stay in our comfort zone.
We do not understand that looking up means seeing ourselves below others and at the same time giving ourselves a sense of inferiority that returns to punish us throughout our lives.
Photos: nuvolanevicata and Africa Studio
