CHAPTER 14
Nobody Likes a Slacker: The Downside of Overachieving
Let me be clear. I love achieving. I love setting goals, reaching them, celebrating the win, and setting new ones. I love crossing things off my to-do list, and when I find myself doing something I hadn’t planned that wasn’t on my to-do list, I add it on simply so I can revel in the checkmarks. (I’m not the only one, right?)
When we’re talking about overachieving, we’re not talking about your regular run-of-the-mill goal setting. Overachieving is making your accomplishments who you are. It’s basing your self-worth on how much you accomplish and how well you do it.
Overachieving is much like perfectionism, but is its own specific and devious monster. Overachievers believe these things: I am my achievements. If I can do more, reach all the goals, be as productive as humanly possible, and make sure everyone knows about it, I can avoid criticism, judgment, and rejection. My entire self-worth is based on what I achieve and how people perceive me in relation to my achievements and what I have accomplished. Overachievers have a one-track mind: achievement = safety and love.
Here’s Susan, a forty-one-year-old physician and mother of three:
I have always been an overachiever. Growing up I was the teacher’s pet every year; I did all my chores first thing on the weekends (and even asked for more chores so I could look better than my complaining brother). I graduated valedictorian along with being in six school clubs and went to an Ivy League medical school. I was constantly looking for ways I could be better than who I was yesterday and be better than everyone else.
It wasn’t until I was forty facing a mental breakdown did I realize I was doing all that because I didn’t think I was a good person or a worthy person unless I had done as much as humanly possible. I became my accomplishments. I didn’t know who I was without them.
Susan’s story is not uncommon. Perhaps the details look different than yours, but the part I want to emphasize is this: “I didn’t think I was a good person or a worthy person unless I had done as much as humanly possible. I became my accomplishments. I didn’t know who I was without them.”
Overachievers put all their eggs in the basket of accomplishments. Since they tend to be really good at getting shit done, they are rewarded. But over time it becomes less satisfying. As with any “drug,” they need more and the reward they feel for doing it all doesn’t seem to cut it.
Overachievers also tend to be anxious most of the time; they are never present with the people they’re around, or even with the project they’re working on. They’re constantly thinking about the next thing to do. For instance, if an overachiever just got proposed to, she’s already thinking about the wedding, not for one moment the love and joy she feels standing in front of her fiancé. Susan drew a line in the sand one day when she realized her day-to-day schedule was so demanding, she was doing enough for three people:
I would get up at 4 or 4:30, work out, catch up on email, and do some household chores before my kids and husband were up. Then, I’d help my kids get ready for the day, get them off to school, and have a day full of patients. I’d rush off to some extracurricular activity for my kids, come home and cook dinner (usually a meal I’d have prepped because I’d spend all day Sunday shopping and prepping for the week). Then, help with homework, do some laundry, get some work done, then collapse in bed at 11 or 12 at night. I was exhausted and running on caffeine and adrenaline all day. I wanted to do it all. I bragged about it. I felt superior telling people how busy I was.
The Massive Downside
Karen is a thirty-seven-year-old woman from Australia. Like Susan, Karen found herself facing a mental breakdown caused by over-achieving:
It never occurred to me that my overachieving was a problem or an issue (or the cause of my massive anxiety). It was coveted and something I was proud of. But it led to an eating disorder and acute anxiety and depression. It affected my relationships because my expectations of other people were so insanely high (unachievable, really) and I could never understand why other people couldn’t or wouldn’t try as hard as me. I always chalk up their “lack of effort” to them not caring about me . . . and so I would just walk away from those relationships.
Many overachievers hold extremely high standards for themselves and everyone else around them. They can’t fathom why people don’t try as hard as they do, feel that other people are irking them on purpose, and are often let down and disappointed by others. As you can image, those attitudes can cause major conflicts in relationships.
Not only that. Overachievers can spread themselves so thin with everything they are doing that they lose focus. When you lose focus, you aren’t as productive as possible, and there is more margin for error. I hate to burst your bubble, but numerous studies show that multitasking lowers productivity. So, all those balls in the air you are juggling? Yep, they’re in the slow lane.
The two biggest issues overachievers tell me they struggle with are anxiety and insomnia. Anxiety being the constant worry that you aren’t doing enough, worrying what other people think (see Chapter 7), and constantly living in the future. And insomnia—isn’t it obvious? Not being able to sleep because of the giant elephant you invited to sleep on your chest that is so big it’s also smothering your face.
WHERE DOES IT COME FROM?
You might think you were just born this way. While Lady Gaga can sing about that all day long, overachieving does not fall into that category. Karen, whose story you heard above, goes on to say:
Growing up, overachieving showed up for me in pretty much everything—from how clean I kept my bedroom, to needing to be at the top of my class at school to even being the nicest person. Later, it shifted to my work as a lawyer, and when that wasn’t enough, it shifted to my food and exercise.
I think it developed as a way for me to avoid criticism from my mum, who was highly reactive and drank a lot when I was young, so I spent a lot of time trying to ensure I went above and beyond to avoid her getting angry. As well as trying to gain attention and approval from my Dad (his favorite saying was “If you’re not first, you’re last”). He always told me how smart I was and I felt an enormous amount of pressure to “go above and beyond” so that I wouldn’t let him down but really I lived in this state of anxiety that at some point he—and everyone else—would realize I wasn’t that smart.
Maybe your parents were super-overachievers themselves, and it was an unspoken given that you would be too. Maybe you had a “Tiger Mom” who set high standards for you and only praised you when you were, in fact, overachieving. Or, maybe like Karen, you had a dismissive parent whose attention you felt you always needed to get. Whatever the circumstances, sometimes it’s helpful to solve the mystery of where this behavior came from—not for you to pick up the phone and scream at your parents, but for you to see the big picture and try to challenge the beliefs that were created about achieving so that you can change them.
But maybe it’s not that obvious for you. There’s a good chance your parents never pushed you too hard, or you never experienced the dysfunction of feeling that you needed to gain attention and love from a parent through your accomplishments. It may be that it’s just something you created in your mind over the years because you felt secure overachieving. Perhaps you observed the praise you got from achieving, ran with it, and always wanted more.
HOW TO FIX IT
I’m about to say something that might surprise you. If you’re an overachiever, I don’t necessarily want you to do less. I’m not going to ask you to only put a maximum of six things on your to-do list, or say, “You need to chill the hell out.” I’m not going to tell you to stop checking your email first thing in the morning. You’re a doer; it’s become part of who you are and probably part of your personality. However, we do need to have a sit-down about it. You can still do all the things you want to do, but I’d like you to take a hard look at it all. Here are a few things to consider:
1. First things first—your physical health. Are you sleeping well? Do you have chronic anxiety? Do you have irritable bowel syndrome? Yes, some of these things can be caused by other factors in your life, but I’d bet all of Oprah’s money that if you have some health problems and you’re an overachiever, that habit (in addition to perfectionism and approval seeking—maybe throw in some controlling behavior and imposter syndrome just for fun) is a major cause. The human body is not made to go pedal to the metal all the time.
2. Take inventory of your personal relationships. Does your partner feel neglected because of your overabundant to-do list? Are your children feeling the burden as well? How’s it going at work? Were you thinking that at the end of your life, “She who dies with the most accomplishments wins”? Remind yourself that “She who dies, having worked hard at her personal relationships and loved with all her heart and soul, wins.” See the massive difference?
3. Look at what you do to take care of your emotional well-being. Pick up any self-help book, and they’ll tell you the antidote for using achievements and productivity to fuel your self-worth is to rest, be still, and have fun. And I’m not going to tell you any different, but since I know you’ll bust a gut at those instructions, I’d like you to listen up for a minute because I have a good feeling I know the hard truth about why you refuse to slow down and not be a slave to all the things you’re doing.
Slow Down, Rest, and Examine
As with the other habits in this book, when you’re overachieving, you’re avoiding looking at the shit that’s going on in your life that you need to look at. For instance, maybe your marriage is in trouble. Instead of having that hard conversation with your partner, or going to therapy alone or as a couple, or breaking up, you do, do, do more. Distract yourself, put all your energy into your to-do list, and feel better about yourself temporarily.
Unfortunately, all the stuff you’re not dealing with is waiting for you and will continue to wait for you and will probably get worse the longer you don’t deal with it.
Being still, slowing down, and resting will likely cause you to think about what might not be going well in your life and feel all the feelings around that. If you’re a classic overachiever, you are avoiding that like a gas station hotdog.
Most overachievers crawl out of their skin when they are in a place of stillness, and for them, resting feels like dying. If this is you, I invite you to take a peek to see what’s over there. I’m not asking you to spend an hour meditating or take the whole day off. All I’m asking is for you to challenge yourself about what you’re avoiding by not wanting to be still. On the surface, you might say it’s that you don’t want to neglect your to-do list, but sister, you’re not fooling me. What are you really avoiding? If you’re feeling ambitious, get out your journal, sit with that question, and answer it.
Embrace Failure
“Every time an overachiever fails, a puppy dies.”
Maybe this statement hangs above your fireplace or in your office. If you’re an overachiever, you take failure as a personal representation of yourself. Failing means “I am a failure.”
I want you to know something, and I want you to understand this in your bones. My wish for you is to keep kicking ass in all the things you kick ass in because you’re good at it. At the same time, I want you to know and believe that failure is to be embraced as part of the process to make you better. Maybe failure is just a terrible word because culturally we’ve made it mean something it isn’t. Without failure, there is no learning. Without failure, there is no improvement. Without failure, there is no creativity or change. The smartest, most innovative, most badass leaders have failed and will continue to do so. If you have to, remind yourself every day that if you stop making mistakes, you stop learning and growing.
I want you to know and believe that failure is to be embraced as part of the process to make you better.
When you fail, make it a goal to fail well. Let it sting (because it most likely will), watch your self-talk, acknowledge that failure is key to your betterment, and as quickly as possible, consciously look at what you have learned from this failure. By doing this, hopefully, you can move away from seeing failure as an ominous thing to be avoided and instead simply accept it as a necessary part of becoming your most outstanding self.
And You Are Competing with Whom?
As an overachiever, you might find yourself in competition with others. I think some people are just born with a competitive streak, and sometimes it can send you into an overachievement-palooza. Wanting to be the best plus wanting to beat a specific person or be number 1 in a group can push you to do more than you can handle. This can come up a lot if you are in a sales or commission job where it is literally your job to be the best to do the most. Know your limits here. It may seem logical, but being an overachiever plus working in a job that encourages and relies on this can be like throwing gasoline on a fire. You can’t change what you won’t acknowledge, so ask yourself if what’s happening in your career (or another area in your life where competition happens) isn’t tormenting you.
My friend Elizabeth was a classic overachiever her whole life and has a competitive nature. It served her well, until one day it didn’t anymore, and she learned to let this habit go:
When I woke up to the fact that I was racing through life as a “Human Doing,” I finally asked myself what it meant to be a human being. Where was I going? What was I racing toward? What is the prize? Spoiler alert: There is no prize!
It helps me enormously to think in these terms. I am by nature competitive (mostly with myself), driven, and motivated to achieve. That’s not a bad thing. But when I pause, breathe, and remind myself there is no prize if I overachieve, it allows me to see the fallacy of it all and I can slow down and focus on what matters more to me—my well-being and connecting with the people I care about the most. Which has in turn made me tremendously happier and more fulfilled.
The thing is: You’re awesome. You’re awesome with or without your achievements. You, just you, without all your triumphs, are still magnificent. The more you can peel back the layers of what’s underneath and start to see that—that you are great just as you are—the more you’ll know you can show up in the world without chronically engaging in the habit of overachievement.
Ask yourself the hard questions:
•If you relate to being an overachiever, where do you think it came from? What are you willing to do to challenge those beliefs that were created?
•How do you feel your overachieving is affecting your life?
•What are you avoiding deep down by not wanting to slow down and rest?
•How do you feel about failure? What do you need to do to shift your perspective about it?
•Are you a competitive person? If so, how it is positive and how it is negative in your life?