Modern times are constantly pushing the need to do, succeed, and achieve. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with being productive and expanding to bigger and better, this game is not what you might think.
Today, people are taught to work and hustle like it’s oxygen. As in, if you don’t your life will go to shit and you will die. This sense of urgency and pressure can annihilate a person inside. Stifle them. And constantly make them feel an anxiety that says nothing is good enough.
Because that’s the way the game is set up. It’s designed to make you feel like nothing is good enough. As long as you feel you are not good enough, you will tirelessly continue pushing, extending, and trying to prove yourself. Until you cross that next milestone.
Unfortunately, that feeling is never coming if you continue with the same mindset that got you here in the first place.
The Need To Prove
For many people, the achievements, wealth, and success were not always borne from a desire to embrace passion or intrinsically pursue ambition. Psychologically, it came from a place where they felt they needed to prove themselves to themselves and others. The fuel driving their accomplishments has been the need to be seen, liked, and accepted.
Sadly, when someone is fundamentally driven to prove themselves, there is nothing external that will ever satisfy that itch. Long work days. Abundant cash flow. Beautiful toys. None of it works to fulfill that underlying need to just be okay with oneself.
Where It All Began
The harsh reality is that for many of us, we didn’t grow up with the emotionally warm, caring, loving figures we needed. While they may have tried their best, the truth is that many of them were not equipped with the tools to provide adequate emotional security, acknowledgment, and validation that a child needs to feel confident in themselves just the way they are.
Incidentally, as children we astutely learned that every time we followed instructions or got the high mark, they became happy with us. In fact, we got so good at the game that we started getting creative in eliciting that approval and warmth. We worked harder. Longer. Accumulated more trophies. Finally, the love was coming in.
Expand this circuit over years and decades, and before you know it we’ve created a streamlined system of pulling levers for the love to drop through.
Real Talk: This Shouldn’t Be Happening
For many people, overachieving is not really about expanding their empire further, growing their portfolio bigger, or helping more people. At its core, it’s about the individual’s deep need to feel like they matter and are worthy of love and affection. The logic is: “Maybe if I do more, they will see how valuable I am and finally love me the way I wish they always would.”
It’s a sobering perspective to take. For someone to think that the reason they’ve spent their entire fucking life hustling, jumping through hoops, and doing exactly as they’ve been instructed to do is just to feel lovable and worthy.
The truth is that when a person feels happy and content with who they are, they will never question their accomplishments, or feel like their hard work was ever a waste or inadequate. They know who they are. They know they are good. And they wear it with pride. Not anxiety.
Imposters Don’t Do Great Things By Chance
The only reason a hard-working, caring, responsible, successful person would ever feel that their performance is inadequate is because they feel inadequate about themselves. Chances are they are anxiously unsure of their achievements because they are unsure of who they are and how amazing they truly are as a human being.
It is impossible to be this good and get to where you are by accident.
The problem was never the achievement.
It was the fuel driving the achievement.
Stand Up and Own Your Space
When a successful person breaks through the anxiety of thinking that they are not good enough and embraces the reality of how smart and great they are, it flips the script completely.
Now, they can go back to living their life, but with one key difference.
They are no longer living trying to prove their worth.
Instead, they are owning it all the way through.
This is where things start to get real fun.
Wow! This says it all. Thank you for sharing.