Vital context
A metaphor I use to explain the inner workings of the mind, is that we have a team of characters inside our heads. They fall into two camps: saboteurs and allies.
Both camps want to help us achieve a happy successful life, but one camp actually helps (allies), and the other one promises adamantly that it helps, but actually doesn’t (saboteurs).
I fired my hyper-achiever.
If you are driven to be the best at what you do, you might have a hyper achiever too.
Any of this sound familiar?
- Love to be efficient and effective
- Focused on thinking and taking action
- It can always be better, and you love working hard to improve (everything)
- Life is about achieving and producing results
, and maybe you have some of this too
- great at putting emotions aside to deal with the problem. emotions just distract anyway. and then they stay buried for ages and may randomly erupt, or you just stop feeling anything at all. a bit empty inside.
- love achieving my goals, but quickly move onto the next thing. don’t stop to celebrate. So you kind end up chasing happiness that you never get to feel
- I’m only worthy as long as I am successful and others think well of me. So any failure means I am a failure. So success or failure becomes the most important thing, I take things so personally.
If you recognise some of these, you may have a hyper-achiever working for you too. You need to fire them too.
Why I fired my hyper-achiever
Even though it’s been with me for years. It helped me through those teen years when I wanted to be accepted and appreciated more than anything.
It helped me get jobs, and in those get “Exceeds” in my performance reviews.
So why would I fire my hyper-achiever?
The cost. It’s too expense to have my hyper-achiever working for me.
It gave me the most horrendous burnout that took three years to recover. 14 months out of work. Inability to sleep, focus, and remember what I came into the room for.
It gave me years of tiredness and groggy thinking. Needing to be switched on all the time, constantly thinking about how to do it better. It uses up so much energy to work this way.
It gave me fleeting moments of joy surrounded by Ages of dissatisfaction. So I never got to experience a job well done. Where was the joy? No time, need to do better.
“Yes, project delivered on time” then immediately onto “this could have been better. That was a mistake, how embarrassing (obsess and beat myself up for the mistake for a while). Next time I need to do xyz.”
I used to get so focused on the task, I’d forget about the people, which created resistance because people don’t like to be treated like objects. This slowed me down so much.
The costs really racked up, and I wasn’t even aware of it. I thought my hyper-achiever was keeping me going. But it wasn’t.
Constantly tired, and all the joy of achieving success gone so quickly. Every time.
So I fired my hyper-achiever, and this is what happened.
I started achieving more.
I had more energy.
My ambition increased, and I went for things I didn’t think I could achieve, and I did achieve them.
Failure didn’t sting so much anymore. Sure, when I fail, it stings, but it passes quickly, and I’m able to learn so much from my failure that my next attempt is miles better.
I work less, get more done, and earn more.
This blows my mind so much that I need to repeat it.
I work less, get more done, and earn more.
And that’s why you should fire your hyper-achiever too.
This post is part of my special Coaching Tips Series. This series was inspired by my clients and the core themes in their challenges. When we can apply these tips, we bring a lot of ease into our lives and step into our leadership. Want to talk it through with me? Call me and let’s make a Game Plan together.