[00:00] Because when you start to feel grateful, then your achiever struggles to come up with more reasons to beat yourself.

[00:09] Welcome back to the Focus B show. This is Katie Sudddart here aka the focus b. And on this show I interview high performers and leaders around the world to discover their secrets on peak performance, productivity, mindfulness and leadership.

[00:29] So if you want to take your.

[00:30] Performance and your leadership to the next level, then you're in the right place. Listen up and connect with the magic.

[00:45] What's the one must for hyperachievers? What's a hyperachiever? A hyperachiever is someone who gets great satisfaction, joy, reward from achievements. Now these can be achievements such as diplomas or awards, or a certain amount of money or milestones, or running a marathon, anything that feels like a challenge. And they get a huge sense of achievement and joy out of it. At first, this might sound like being a hyperachiever is fantastic. You achieve all of these goals, you get joy in the process. And when you achieve them and it's true that people who are hyperachievers generally do pretty well. Pretty well in their careers, or maybe in sports, or in different areas of their life. So what's the downfall of being a hyperachiever? If you're listening to this right now, maybe that you are a hyperachiever and then you know what I'm talking about. The downfall is that we become reliant on these achievements. That if a few months go by, or years where we don't achieve as much, when we don't get those results that boost that award, that diploma, that whatever it is, milestones, sports, that progress. And we start to feel low and we start to look at ourselves and see ourselves in a negative light. Suddenly we believe we're not good enough, though we don't deserve everything that we've achieved in the past and we're amounting to nothing now. And this dependency on external results, interestingly enough, can actually be a counterbalance for our performance. Let me explain this more clearly. As a hyperachiever, generally we get good performance, good at school or good at work, again, good at sports or hobby. And this is a drive that helps us to have high levels of performance. We do things well and professionally and we show up and we do good job. But what happens is when we start to get discouraged or we're not getting the type of results that maybe we wish for, then the performance starts to deteriorate because there's a lack of self compassion, because we stop believing in ourselves. So interestingly enough, the hyperachievers don't always get great performance. Yes they can. But if they reach that plateau where things aren't happening as much as they'd want them to, then it starts to go downhill. So what's a must if you're a hyperachiever? What do you need in order to a sustain this performance, but also to feel good about yourself? Self compassion. And this is where I love Mel Robbins'work because she talks a lot about self compassion. High fives in the morning to celebrate your successes, reward yourself, and look at what you have achieved so far. Self compassion is tremendously important, and it's one of the skills that most of us, and definitely hyperachievers, have not developed. So what is self compassion? Because you might think it would lead you to be complacent. This is very typical of hyperachievers. You think, oh, if I'm too nice to myself, I won't do as well. That's not true. But that's what we believe and that's okay. Self compassion is really just talking to yourself as you would talk to someone that you really love and care about. If you were talking to if you have a child, a really young child, or to your closest, your best friend or a sibling, what would you tell them? If they're doing well at work but not quite as well as the previous months? Or if instead of running a marathon, this time they've run half a marathon, you probably think, amazing, well, you still ran and good for you and this is going great. You'd encourage them, you'd be supportive. What do you say to yourself when your results aren't as high as you'd like them to be? That's rubbish. You could have done better. Why aren't you working hard enough? You're being complacent. So self compassion is just learning to speak to yourself kindly, to think to yourself kind words, and to not constantly beat yourself up for not doing as well as you wanted to, or to not meet your expectations. I've been practicing this for a while now, and this is what it looks like in practice. Instead of feeling bad that I'm not exercising even more, I'm going to celebrate every time I exercise, even if it's ten minute, even if it's a walk during lunch, I'll say, Nice job, well done. And sure, sometimes there's a tidy voice in my head think, seriously, that wasn't that much. But then I've learned to think, no, this is good, you did something that was great. So celebrating small milestones, small steps is a big part of self compassion. Another is I try and talk to myself again as if I was speaking to my best friend. So in times where I feel discouraged or I'm not doing as well as I'd like to, I just think, hey, you've achieved this much, or this is going well, or look at this aspect that you haven't been thinking about recently. You've made great progress here. So I contrast with the past. I celebrate small wins or quick wins and big wins. Also, I celebrate instead of just moving straight onto the next goal, I pause and acknowledge how far I've come. And also I express gratitude. Gratitude for life, gratitude for people in my life. Because when you start to feel grateful, then your hyperachiever struggles to come up with more reasons to beat yourself up, to do better. It thinks no, this is pretty great. Again, I highly doubt if you're a hyperachiever that this will make you complacent. Because from what I've noticed, hyperachievers that have this strong drive for achievement, they rarely really become complacent and when they do, it's only because they're so disappointed in themselves and their results. For instance, in my case, I know that I'm learning Swedish as I live in Sweden and my Swedish wasn't going as good as I'd like it to. And then we could say I became complacent, as in I stopped putting in the effort to learn it for a bit, then I went back on track. But that period of complacency was not linked to self compassion, that was linked to disappointment in my abilities coming from my hyperachiever. So once more, this is an example of when performance diminishes, but just because you're feeling bad about it, this is not self compassion. Self compassion would have been to say, well, you're already progressed this far and you've been focusing on all these other aspects in your business that are going well, now it's time to level up, but you're doing great. That would be an example of a more self, compassionate way. You won't be your own coach and mentor. Like this is great and you can get to the next level. But acknowledging that this is great and not beginning with this is rubbish, let's get to the next level, which is a bit the hyperachiever mindset. hyperachiever and perfectionism have a lot in common. They're not exactly the same, but in the mindset it's a lot to do with a lack of being good enough and wanting to compensate from external results. Another aspect that I maybe haven't said specifically or as clearly as I could have, is that this hyperachiever, it's linked to external goals and results. Speaking Swedish, external business, external sports, those are all things in the external world. So there's a lack of attention and observation on what's going on inside. And this is hugely important thinking. Are you at peace? Are you feeling aligned? Are you in harmony? How are your energy levels? How are you managing your emotions? And recently I've shift a lot, a lot from these external boosts of new project, new client, something going well on the outside and I've started to pay a lot more attention on what's going on within. Am I feeling calm today? How's my tempo? How's my breathing? Is my breathing super short and fast or is it deep? How are my emotions, how are my energy levels? How have I responded to people around me? Why is it important to shift? Because again, we don't want to become dependent on external results. We want to aim towards them, do what we can, do our very best, get them, celebrate, move on, but we don't want to become dependent on them. And by shifting this to how we feel within and that's fully within our control, not only well, first of all, it makes it more likely to achieve your results, because if your energy levels are high, that will contribute to it. But also at the end of the day, it's kind of more important. I don't want to break this to you, especially you hyperachiever, who loves these results and these goals and these achievements. But really, at the end of the day, one more project, one more client, one more financial milestone isn't what life is about. If you wake up and you're feeling happy, if you're fulfilled in your relationships, if you feel aligned and in harmony in your life, that's what matters. So the reason I've shifted is not that I don't care about achievements anymore. hyperachiever will always be a hyperachiever in some ways, but it doesn't matter as much. It's not as important as feeling good every day. Because guess what? If you feel rubbish all of the time until you reach your goal, I guarantee that when you reach your goal, you'll still feel rubbish. So if you feel stressed and tense and overwhelmed until you achieve that result, when you achieve that result, you'll probably still feel tensed and overwhelmed and stressed because it won't just vanish just because you got that result. Now, on the other hand, if you're feeling at peace and contented and in harmony and happy every day, then when you reach that result, probably you'll still feel happy and in peace and in harmony. I hope this has been useful for you. I realize I've covered a lot. To briefly summarize it, as a hyperachiever, we're dependent on external results, and instead you want to shift this to being more self, compassionate and also spending more time and energy observing what's going on within and not being too dependent on what's going on in the external world. Thank you for tuning in today. It would mean the world to me if you could leave a review on Apple podcasts or Spotify or share this episode with a friend or family member. This helps other people to discover the podcast and maybe they need to hear this message today. So thank you in advance for doing this, for contributing to sharing these messages in the world, and I hope that you've taken away some nuggets of information, some tips that you can apply in your life to feel more fulfilled in everything that you do. Thank you for tuning in.

[13:00] Thank you so much for tuning in today to the Focus Bee Show. I would absolutely love to hear your feedback. So let me know in an Apple review or YouTube comment what was most valuable for you, and feel free to share this episode with a friend or a family member. Wishing you a wonderful, magical and focused day ahead.