Gosh, I wish that wasn't a serious question.

Basically, what's going on is, I'll often have something I need or want to get done, but I'm hesitant to get started. And then when I finally get the drive to get something done, I'll hold myself back or stop myself from doing it. Doesn't have to be something tedious. It could be something I've done and enjoyed before.

Could be something other than fear of success, but at this time it seems like the best explanation, unless you guys can think of something better.

The only thing I could possibly say is just try to over-look it as best you can and go through with it. I know that you've probably already have tried that... but I honestly can't think of anything else.

You don't have a fear of success. You have a fear of having nothing to do.

I make LPs every other week, and I have more than a few games that I'd like to complete (both creation and playing). I highly doubt that I'll be running out of things to do any time soon.

Do you ever have this "fear of success" in your LP creation. If so, how do you get past it and if not, why do you think it is different from the other things you're talking about?

Certain elements of, but otherwise I've done it enough that I'm used to getting it done, and actually makes a great way to procrastinate.

It's not a fear, and it's not primarily about success, though that could certainly play a role. It has a lot to do with habits. When someone loses their virginity, or writes their first book, it's not familiar to them and the act itself takes on a great deal of significance - an evolutionary byproduct of life-in-general. Parachuting for the first time is a classic instance, and the examples go on and on.

But it doesn't have to mean those kinds of things, the same perspective can persist in the smallest, most nuanced patterns of how we go about our day. In some people it's more impacting than others, almost to the point of being literally debilitating. Some people do not have this built-in wariness at all. And that's what it primarily is - a cautionary impulse about taking the way home you've never taken before, but because of the way a human mind establishes formulas, and doesn't apply instincts to specific scenarios, but just slathers them on whenever the butter thinks this might be toast (think about how that hesitancy crops up on things you say you've done and enjoyed - in some people, it comes with that level of potency), it becomes a part of how we experience almost everything.

This can't be the only thing that's stopping you from doing things, though - I'm guessing you probably have other personality quirks working in tandem with it, which is why it gets such a powerful hold. Simple things like laziness and a lack of confidence to the complex love of comfort zones, whatever - I don't know you well enough to say what's what, but I do suspect you have more than your fair share of neuroses, and could have my guesses at it.

But the primary thing here is the instinct itself, which has a voice in you, and certain things about you especially prone to hearing it. Basically the only thing you can do is finish things. You have to set a new standard, and you have to build new patterns onto it. Once you know it's possible on a conscious level, and know it's not dangerous on an instinctual one, every time after in the sack or out of the plane or to the end of the page is simpler and clearer - though that doesn't mean the pathologically lazy won't still have to combat their laziness, it just won't be abetted by so many simultaneous impulses.
And, really, on a simpler plane, in people without confidence in themselves just knowing that they can, giving themselves definitive proof of the fact, can be wildly helpful.

But it's going to require serious self-trickery - and I mean that literally. We are not in control of everything, and that which we are not deliberately or naturally conscious of we have to wrestle where we want it to go. This involves self-consciously understanding who you are, what you do, why you do it, and manipulating these facts. It doesn't matter if you're thinking that something so blatant won't work on a mind - you're not the one the trick is being played on.

I'd say getting control of your mind is a lot like coaxing sexual favors out of the mentally handicapped, but I was doing so well about not being crass in this post.

If you don't succeed, then by definition you fail. Likewise, if you are not succeeding, then you are failing. If you are always failing, and have some sort of subconscious pathological disposition against success, then it seems to me that you are succeeding at failing, and if your aforementioned subconscious pathological disposition holds true, than you should therefore be afraid of your success at failing. What you need to do here is start failing at failing, and the only way to do that is to succeed successfully.

^ That is both disturbing and hilarious. I award you 1 (One) Internet.

when i'm apprehensive about doing something i just imagine doing it and then pretend i've already done it and say 'see, that was easy, this is a breeze' and shut my brain down so i can't think about it and worry and debate. like jumping out of a plane. imagine yourself doing it and then jump out instead of thinking about jumping out. basically. like nly said, you have to trick yourself a bit. pretend for a bit to be a different and very confident easy going person who has done it telling the other you whom you're ignoring the pitiful pleas of how great it is. the important part is to remember which one you are, the big one, not the pitiful one. you've already done it and you're still fine and nothing has blown up. =)