“I just want a shred of happiness in my life that isn’t apart of my accomplishments or anything external.”
NOTE TO READERS: I wrote this in February and let it sit until now and made minimal edits. No mention of COVID will appear so wanted you to understand that before you continue reading. Also note I use “elite” and “high” achievement interchangebly. Thank you.
I confessed this to a close friend and I’m sharing it with you now. I’ve come to the conclusion that “proud” and “happy” are very different emotions and I want to examine them within this high achievement vs self-acceptance paradox. An episode of the Tim Ferriss show brought this paradox to the top of my mind and I wanted to share my thoughts as this is something I struggle with.
Where is the line between excellence and perfection? When is the pursuit of excellence in all areas of life a net positive without crossing over into micromanaging, pissed off about small mistakes, and a general lack of never feeling like anything you do is good enough?
This has been something I’ve grappled with now for... well from a macro sense most of my life but for the past 3 years, it’s been on hyperdrive. When everything falls on you, I think it’s only natural for these feelings to intensify. It wasn’t until I heard an interview on the Tim Ferriss Show with Brene Brown that I really started to get a sense of the “answer” to this question. Brene is someone I’ve obviously heard of but never really dove into her work as of yet. Only have so many hours in the day and have a lot to consume. Part of it is a feeling of playing catchup. I feel like I’m behind when it comes to the relationship between my age and my career. That’s for another post.
If you are anything like me, you very rarely take a step back and give yourself the credit you deserve for your accomplishments. It’s always about what’s next. I love that. But, it can take a toll on you when you feel like nothing you do is ever “good enough.”
To give this post the respect it deserves, I first want to identify what high achievement and self acceptance both mean to me. I think we all have different levels of what we consider high achievement making it subjective and the level of self-acceptance we’ve felt in our life impacts how we define it. Whether you are an athlete who has incredibly high standards for his or her performance or an entrepreneur looking to make a real difference in this world with your product or service, you are bound to come across this paradox as well in your journey.
High Achievement
High achievement is understanding your principles and values and matching them with the quality of work you put out into the world, whether that’s on a field or court, content creation, coaching, etc. Combining principles and values with knowledge and skill set of that particular “field of play” will impact the perceived quality. For instance, as I become a better writer and honing my craft and desire more people to read my work, it’s only natural that I would feel as though I’m doing a disservice to my community if I didn’t implement new and different ways of positioning and promoting my content. Email, social media snippets, mentioning the piece of my podcast. Coming up with more intriguing titles, hooks, and reasons for you to spent time consuming this. After all, your time is valuable right?
I have a great example of what this looks like from my life. If you don’t know already, I am growing a media group as well. I know the performance side will take time to grow and mature. I offer media services, specifically podcast production currently, to online coaches. I won’t get into why this is such a no-brainer to do at my current stage but let’s just say it’s the smartest ROI for my time. Anyway, I recently took over a podcast that was produced by another company. Their main focus was quality of the audio. While that is a one of my major focuses, it’s not my top priority.
User experience is my top priority. What does that mean? Is the title intriguing, does the copy of the description sound “on brand” with that particular podcast? Is the content valuable and actionable (this is for my own podcast)? I could spend more time in Audition playing with filters to make it sound better, but for me, I would rather spend my time making the user experience better. That’s just my principles and values. (That said show has now 10xed it’s downloads in 6 months working with me. Felt I needed to mention that). That’s also why you are reading this on a third party platform away from my Squarespace site. I didn’t care for the layout and aesthetics of Squarespace’s blog format. I wanted something that matched the brand I had in my mind and Storychief allowed me to build that. While I have incredibly high standards for my work, it has lead to being self-corrosive at times to not take a step back and feel pride in my work and to feel like nothing I do is good enough. My guess is you’ve felt this at some point in your life or even right now. When is good “good enough?”
Self-Acceptance
Self-acceptance comes from disassociating your achievements from your core identity. This is the difference between “I” and “me.” The “I” is predominately concerned with achievement and external circumstances. I am this, I need to be better at this, etc. The I isn’t bad by itself. It’s only when it starts to affect the “me”. “Me” is our overall self-concept and is the closest thing to the definition of “happiness.” Me just exists in neutrality.
“Me” in it’s purest form, doesn’t give a damn what anyone else thinks but themselves. “Me” also looks upon their life from an observational perspective rather than a damning, self judging perspective. The reason why so many people live solely in the “I” is because they haven’t developed this self-awareness skill set.
Anyway, with that skillset constantly being improved on, you will understand reality of not only yourself but others in a new light. You’ll come to find that what you thought was reality was just your emotional responses, backed by your current beliefs.
It all starts with beliefs. Those beliefs lead to certain emotions. Those emotions lead to us acting in a certain way positively or negatively, and end up being our results. This is known as the BEAR formula. Our results tell us the story of our perceived reality.
Don’t have as much money as you want? That starts with your beliefs and emotions towards money. Don’t have someone special in your life? Examine the actions you take stemming from your beliefs and emotions. Doing this all while not judging yourself may seem like a Herculean task at the beginning and I believe it’s that way for most people. We were taught to combine emotional responses to our actions. “Go in the corner and think about what you did.” We are conditioned to feel guilt and shame. Any fans of Big Mouth will appreciate this Shame Lizard reference.
Let’s take swearing as a child for example. We are taught that it is morally wrong to swear (at least I was going to a Christian school the first 5 years of my education). I (apparently) once asked my best friend at the time, “where the hell he was” after not seeing him for a few days. Some individual told on me and yes I am refraining from swearing or calling this individual a name right now.
I was called to the principles office and asked if I said the word “Hell?” I immediately started to cry for feeling like such a bad person. They called my mom and she had to come into school to be told this. Later to find out in my adulthood she was pretty pissed that’s all it was and she had to take off of work for that reason. It stands to reason we need a level of self-acceptance in our lives, free from the high achievement to enjoy the experience of life.
Now that we have examined high achievement and self-acceptance, the question now is, “Where is the line?”
“I won’t allow you to manipulate me. I’ll live my life; I’ll go my own way; I’ll keep myself free to think my thoughts, to follow my inclinations and tastes. And I’ll say no to you. If I feel I don’t want to be in your company, it won’t be because of any negative feelings you cause me... You don’t have anymore power over me.” Anthony De Mello
This is the conversation you need to have between the “I” and the “Me” and only you can determine it. Brene said it best when she said, “I will decide the line. Nobody else.”
Have that difficult conversation with yourself and decide where your values and principles are at. Are you mentally strong enough to handle the standards you set for yourself? Is that something you need to work on? When will you know enough is enough when working on a certain project and hit the publish or send button?
Then start to recognize when you start to cross that line with yourself and start to beat yourself up. Remember that you determine what you think is important. No one else.
I coach obsessed athletes and entrepreneurs how to cultivate this level of awareness in their lives and give them the tools and accountability to permanently change and start to see better results along with having a greater sense of self-acceptance in their lives. One specific way is the Evening Design exercise where we review the days work, give acknowledgment and thanks for the effort put forth, and recognize how that days work played into our overall vision. This builds momentum.
If you are ready to be one of those individuals, click here and apply for 1-1 coaching.
If you aren’t quite ready for 1-1 coaching, I have a free mini-course I mentioned earlier that I know you’ll love and hope you check out today.