Acharya Prashant explains the quote, "You are so powerful actually that you are scared of yourself," by analyzing its structure. He points out that there are three uses of 'you' or 'yourself' in the statement. The first two instances, 'You are so powerful' and 'that you are scared,' refer to the small self or the ego, which he equates with the classical term 'Aham'. The final 'yourself' refers to something dimensionally different: the great Self, the Truth, or the 'Atman'—the best that one can be. This means that the ego is afraid of its own betterment. The ego is so accustomed to its own littleness and its familiar excuses of powerlessness and worthlessness that it cannot tolerate reaching a point where these excuses no longer hold. The ego is comfortable with its limitations. The speaker illustrates this with an analogy of a fat man. If you tell the man he cannot run fast, he is happy because it confirms his limitation. However, if you tell him that with effort he could become the next Usain Bolt, he will be scared. This fear arises because achieving such betterment would require a year of 'paying up,' shedding old habits, and giving up a lot. The ego does not want to give up its accumulations. The fundamental reason for this fear is that the betterment of the ego is nothing but the reduction of the ego. While we all want to accumulate and become bigger, in the case of the ego, betterment implies getting smaller. Since the ego does not want to get smaller, it is scared of its own potential for betterment. This is the scare that the quote refers to.