5 Big Impacts of Unresolved Insecurity Leaders Need to Know

The spillover effect

The demands facing many business leaders in the current economic climate can leave little time for the overall wellbeing of the leader themselves. This can cause a backlog of personal challenges that go unaddressed. 

When time is made for personal growth, most leaders typically try and solve their problems on the same level that the pain shows up. Because they experience pain with their health, they imagine it is a health problem. When they feel pain in their finances, it is assumed to be a money problem. At other times, when the pain manifests in their relationships with others, it is natural to believe it is a relationship problem. 

Insecurity makes you give all your best effort to serving someone else’s vision or to invest heavily in projects that make you look good but are not an embodiment of your true purpose in life.

The issue here is that because this surface level pain is merely the symptom of deeper dysfunction. Time, money and effort spent solving the problem at this level is wasted. 

Often people imagine their behaviour is somehow disconnected from any other area of their life. It somehow exists on its own, in a vacuum. This belief is bolstered by the cultural proclivity for behaviour management strategies as the best way to do personal change.

But they're wrong

Any level of clear thinking about this idea shows how deeply flawed it is. Behaviour is simply the byproduct of belief. Behaviour never lies. It is an accurate reflection of our map of the world and always proves what we believe to be true. Behaviour is simply the product at the end of the assembly line. Your behaviour is not weird, mysterious, or anomalous. To view your life in this way is such a lazy observation. 

While most people are either insecure about being insecure, or pretend not to be insecure, the fear of not being good enough is a universal human challenge. If left unaddressed, it causes us to show up at our worst in every area of life and undermines our capacity to function in our true potential. 

Every cell in our body is hardwired for self-preservation. It is our most basic human instinct. If the greatest threat to your safety is to be found out as not good enough, then for as long as this fear is unaddressed, you will be protecting yourself from this perceived danger in every area of life – whether you are conscious of it or not. To show up to life present and unguarded would lead to inevitable exposure. No one would act against themselves so callously. Therefore, all energy is directed to staying safe instead. Here is how this plays out in 5 key areas of life:

1. Health

When you are insecure, it serves you to be unhealthy. Extra weight, patterns of sickness, low energy and poor sleep are all a cop out to lower what is expected of you. What looks like a health problem is often an insecurity problem. Your body craves health. When you have eradicated the fear of not being good enough, then it is safe to show up healthy and attractive because there is no longer anything to prove or defend

2. Money  

Insecurity causes you to either seek to cover your inadequacies with whatever will make you more money, or consistently undervalue yourself and experience lack and financial pressure. What looks like a money problem, is often just an insecurity problem. Money is the reward you get for accurately understanding your value to the world. When you fully own your value and worth internally, it is immediately reflected in your relationship with money. 

3. Work

If you are insecure, it serves you to stay safe in a job that you hate but are good at. Insecurity also causes you to buy into the idea that you are weaker than you think so going out on your own would only lead to being found inadequate. However, what looks like a work problem is just an insecurity problem. Eventually your job is supposed to suck. That pain is there to remind you to keep growing your capacity to bring your unique contribution to the world in your own unique way. 

4. Relationships

Your ability to give and receive love with others flows directly out of a loving relationship with yourself. 

Being insecure causes you to tolerate dysfunctional relationships and allow people to treat you poorly. Needing others to validate and accept you in order to feel good about yourself means they also have the power to withhold these things from you if you don’t play their game properly. Therefore, what looks like a relationship problem is an insecurity problem. 
Your ability to give and receive love with others flows directly out of a loving relationship with yourself. 

5. Purpose

Insecurity makes you give all your best effort to serving someone else’s vision or to invest heavily in projects that make you look good but are not an embodiment of your true purpose in life. Your purpose in life cannot be to prove that you matter. Your adult work is to discover your inherent worth separate from what you do, so that you are then free to show up to life with your cup full and connect with a purpose that is bigger than you and not even about you!