A Need to Achieve
How this need is sabotaging your life
Do you find yourself signing up for competitions? Or do you feel yourself gaging your success to another person’s image and then trying to outperform them?
Is it important to look good — but not just physical appearance, but how people perceive you?
Are insecurities meant to stay hidden and you require yourself to put on a positive face?
Would a chameleon be the animal you’d say would best describe you because of their incredible ability to adapt to their environment?
Maybe not all of these are in the forefront of your mind when you consider how you operate in the world, but we know they are somewhere close to the surface.
As a *Hyper-Achiever there is a dependency for constant performance and success in order to have a certain level of self-respect and self-validation. The focus on external success is so high that the tendency to be a workaholic will overrule a deeper emotional connection within relationships.
Let me bullet point these (for quicker reading… )
· Competitive, image and status conscious
· Good at covering up insecurities and showing positive image.
· Adapt personality to fit what would be most impressive to the other. Goal oriented and workaholic streak.
· More into perfecting public image than introspection.
· Can be self promoting.
· Can keep people at safe distance.
“When we seek to achieve, we do so at the expense of a deeper level of happiness.”
Read that again:
When we seek to achieve we do so at the expense of a deeper level of happiness. At the expense of intimacy within relationships. At the expense of connection with other humans. (It is worth the repeat because when we start to focus on these over winning, we win a bit more.)
Some thoughts a Hyper-Achiever have are:
· I must be best at what I do.
· If I can’t be outstanding, I won’t bother.
· Must be efficient and effective.
· Emotions get in the way of performance.
· Focus on thinking and action.
· I can be anything I want to be.
· You are worthy as long as you are successful and others think well of you.
These thoughts lead to feelings of being distracted. Of not liking to dwell in the feels for too long. Or some combination of these:
· Sometimes feeling empty and depressed inside, but don’t linger there.
· Important to feel successful. That’s what it is all about. Feeling worthy mostly when successful.
· Could have fear of intimacy and vulnerability. Closeness with others would allow them to see the well hidden imperfections.
Of course this voice wants you to believe all of this true, it’s how it stays alive inside your head. It also tells you these:
· Life is about achieving and producing results.
· Portraying a good image helps me achieve results.
· Feelings are just a distraction and don’t help anything.
Knowing that our brains are so powerful that it will seek information to prove itself — called self-fulfilling prophecy or confirmation bias — does make it a little more difficult to convince it otherwise. So, let’s take a look at how hyper-achievement impacts the self and others:
· Peace and happiness is fleeting and short-lived in brief celebrations of achievement.
· Self-acceptance is continuously conditioned on the next success.
· Lose touch with deeper feelings, deeper self, and ability to connect deeply with others.
· Others might be pulled into the performance vortex of the Hyper-Achiever and become similarly lopsided in their focus on external achievement.
This isn’t our fault. This was a survival mechanism. All the ‘Self’ things — validation, acceptance and love — are conditional based on performance. Maybe this was because we were given love on a conditional basis, or we were altogether dismissed by our parents.
In some cases, even when parents were incredibly loving and approving, it can be easy for kids to equate affection/love as a reward for achieving, obeying the rules, having good manners, etc, rather than unconditional as the parent intended.
Awareness of these patterns, thoughts and feelings is the first step in changing our responses. It’s a conscious effort to make these changes and using the Sage perspectives will help, but the truth is, words matter. The narrative must change, not just internally, but in your external conversations as well.
Questions to consider:
· In what areas of your life are you most competitive?
· What would improve if you let go of the idea that acceptance and love were conditional?
· How would you like to connect with yourself?
· What’s the best thing that could happen if you allowed yourself to be vulnerable?
This article based on information from Positive Intelligence. Hyper-Achiever is the term used to describe one of the nine Saboteurs listed in this book.
To Learn more about this and other Saboteurs, reach out to Rina at Rina@RinaJensen.com.
