Why High Achievers Overwork And How To Ease The Climb

We unpack why high achievers turn success into struggle and how to lead with ease without losing ambition. We share a personal story, name control as fear, and map a path from worthiness work to somatic safety and real support.

• achievements used as proof of worth
• childhood praise shaping identity and drive
• the empty high of stacking wins
• control reframed as fear and how to release it
• receiving help and the joy of shared achievement
• getting out of survival mode through somatic work
• practical shifts for rest, presence and results

Thank you for always being here. And as always, let’s stay connected.

Chapters

• 0:00 Setting The Stakes For High Achievers
• 0:41 Achievements As A Proxy For Worth
• 2:55 A Personal Spiral Of Proving And Pushing
• 6:45 Reframing Control As Fear
• 9:11 Receiving Support And Shared Joy
• 10:01 From Survival Mode To Somatic Safety
• 11:42 Closing Gratitude And Connection

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:14

The magnetic leader of an entrepreneur level up. Step it up because I believe it.

SPEAKER_01: 0:34

The hidden struggles of high achievers. This is the number one download on the magnetic leader. So, what is one of the biggest struggles that I have seen in the leaders, entrepreneurs, and founders that I've worked with for almost 12 years? It is the wonderful ability to make things so much harder than they need to be. And I laugh because I've been there. And if you're watching this, my guess is you've been there too. So, why does this happen? Why do so many high achievers make things harder than they need to be? And I'm gonna answer in this episode what do we do to release that need and make things so much easier on ourselves? Because I can tell you, when you break free from that pattern and you allow yourself to receive and be the leader, the entrepreneur, the founder, who releases the belief that you need to do it all on your own, and you accept the help, whether divine or through other people, the journey becomes so much more enjoyable. Not to mention your results are going to increase. So why do we make things so much harder than they need to be? Well, one of the patterns of the high achiever is that often we've become a high achiever because we are using our achievements as proof of validation of our worth, of our self-worth. Every time we get an achievement, it puts another coin in our jar. The problem with this is we're often just stacking achievements, not fully enjoying or leaning into the gratitude of each one. And if we look back at our childhood, a lot of times we got praise for our achievements. So we associated that with love and acceptance and significance. The problem is when we don't achieve or we don't get the win, we can then go down a self-critical spiral and think we are not deserving of love, or we are not significant, or we have no value to give. This creates the never-ending spiral of always needing to achieve, always need to climb the mountain. The problem is we're not even enjoying climbing the mountain, we're just focused on the peak. And then when we get to the peak, we're not even enjoying that. And then it's off to the next. So part of the work to shift this pattern, one, is of course doing the inner work around worthiness, around self-love, self-acceptance, loving the parts of us that at one time didn't feel enough and needed to achieve to feel that sense of belonging, that sense of being cherished, whatever it is for you. For me, it was a sense of just feeling enough. Funny enough, it's interesting that I didn't do very well in school. I shouldn't say I didn't do very well. It was, it was somewhat average, but in my mind, I didn't do very well because I struggled to understand certain things that were being taught simply because it's the method of teaching that I didn't resonate with. However, I had this belief system that I was somehow not enough, not smart, not as smart as the other people as the other students. And after having my daughter and going back to college and going back to university and doing really well, it started to feed this part of me that was like, oh, I'm getting really good marks. Oh, I'm graduating with honors. It's giving me a sense that I didn't have before of I am smart. But it wasn't feeding a horrible, healthy place in me. It was feeding a part of me that was like, yes, this is what I need. I need more of this. I need to feel more of this. And it, but it was an empty, it was like going in and it was just kind of dropping in and fizzling out. And then I would need the next achievement.

unknown: 5:39

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 5:39

And then I would sign up for a marathon, or I would sign up for something athletic. And I would go and I would do it, but I wasn't really being present and enjoying every moment of the experience and what my body was doing and what my body was capable of. It was again feeding this void inside of me that was saying, oh, those old feelings of not being smart or not being enough, we're pushing those away now because we have all these achievements. The problem is with this, again, going back to circling back to what we talked about at the beginning, was everything was really feeling hard. Everything was always pushing, I was always pushing for something, striving, trying to climb the mountain. And I wasn't allowing divine source energy to come in and support me. I wasn't even allowing other people to come in and support me. It was this mission to do everything myself. So, how do we shift from this? First, again, is doing the inner work. It's knowing that we are not our achievements, that we are beautiful divine beings. Our birth is our worth. We don't need anything external to prove that we are worthy. We are completely worthy in ourselves. I'm simplifying the process here. Obviously, everyone has their own experience. Your journey with self-worth and inner work may be a long one. It may be a short one. It's always personal. But that is the first step. The second step is being open to receive, getting to a place where you can release control. What is control based in? Fear. That's it. That's all that's all control is. And it's funny. Sometimes I'll be talking with a person and we'll be talking about control. It's funny because high achievers will often have no problem saying that they love control. Sometimes they'll even call themselves control freak, control freaks. And I'm guilty of this too. But when you phrase it in a way of control is actually fear. So maybe you're a fear freak and you just you're you just love to be scared. They don't like that. I didn't like that either. But it's a mirror, but it's a reflection that you need to be honest with yourself. Because if you weren't scared, and by the way, there's nothing wrong with fear. Fear is part of the human experience. There's absolutely nothing wrong with admitting that you have fear towards something, or that you want to control something because you are scared. That is being human. It takes a very courageous person to admit that yes, I am scared of something, and that is why I'm trying to control it. When we deal with the fear, when we don't push it away, when we don't ignore it, when we get honest with it, we bring it to the surface, we see it for what it actually is. It dissolves the illusion that fear is, and we can release the control. Sometimes it happens quite quickly, sometimes it happens in stages. But this is part of learning that you don't need to do everything on your own, you certainly don't need to control everything, and that bringing other people in and sharing the weight of something is not only going to feel better for you, it's going to feel much more soul fulfilling. Because when you can achieve with others, this is a next level of joy. We're already high achievers. We've already achieved plenty on our own. When you can allow someone else in to help you and you can go on this journey together and be present with the journey, it brings in a whole nother element of the process. Third, how do we make things so much easier for us? One, again, we're gonna reiterate is working on the worthiness piece. Two, it's releasing control, allowing people to come in and help you. And three, it's being safe in your body. Many of the high achievers that I work with are all running in a survival program. It is very hard for them to rest, even when they are in a place designed for rest. If you've ever gone on a vacation and you can't seem to sit still, you go and you tell yourself you're not gonna check your phone or you're not gonna go on your laptop, which maybe you shouldn't even bring your laptop. But if you do bring your laptop, uh you find yourself checking it. You find yourself going on. Right? There's this innate feeling of I always need to be going, I always need to be busy. That rest is dangerous. This is a critical piece of the healing is getting yourself out of survival, of getting your body out of survival. Because a lot of the high achievers that I work with are very in their head. So they like to conceptualize everything. But this isn't the work of the head. This is the work of the body. So whether you're working with a body worker, whether you're working with someone trained in trauma release of the body, whether you're doing somatic healing, whether you're doing work on your own. We do some of this work in the magnetic leadership accelerator, but it's very, very important that you have a system that allows you to get out of survival mode so you can finally know what it feels like to rest, to truly rest and receive. It's about reprogramming the whole system, it's about letting go and reprogramming. I hope this was helpful. I love you. I appreciate you. Thank you for always being here. And as always, let's stay connected.