The inner power that drives them to attain nobility may cause them discontent.

KEY POINTS

• For high achievers, even though they make great sacrifices, their achievements become significantly less valuable once achieved.
• For most high achievers, the price of success is isolation and loneliness.
• Their biased self-perception can be traced back to a young age when they were invalidated by their environment or considered unintelligent or lazy.

Successful people go out of their way to satisfy their insatiable need for success. The goals for which they blindfold themselves are achieved through their relationship, their free time, and the satisfaction of their physical and emotional needs. The paradox is this: despite the fact that they make great sacrifices, their achievements lose much value when they are realized.

The main problem is that the goalpost is constantly moving. There are always more degrees to earn, organizations to join, promotions to earn, and board positions to earn.

They spend most of their energy prospering through an endless list of rewards. Instead, they need to focus on the constant feeling of deprivation that supports this desire.

While achieving goals is motivating in and of itself, it is fundamental to boosting self-esteem. The catch is this: their self-esteem becomes kaleidoscopic, constantly changing and creating new conditions for proving their worth.

Ultimately, behind the pursuit of these goals is an attempt to resolve the inner feeling of unworthiness or lack of understanding of who you are.

For top performers, every day doesn’t start from scratch. Instead, they operate from the red zone, where they believe they are permanently located. They often see themselves as less competent, smart, or naturally capable, which makes them work even harder to make up for these perceived shortcomings. If they are competing with others in climbing a mountain, they measure their starting point at a disadvantage behind the starting line.

Self-perception based on past difficulties

Usually, this distorted self-perception goes back to an early period in life when they were devalued by the environment or considered unintelligent or lazy. There is a common history of undiagnosed childhood depression that not only went untreated but was labeled congestive and neglected. This internalized self-image lags far behind the starting point in relation to others as they face new challenges in the present.

In their attempts to avoid this predicament by working harder, longer, and smarter, this feeling keeps recurring as they often fail to remove the bias from their point of view. Instead, they focus on solving their inner self-esteem problem through the outside world, with tangible trophies and accomplishments that never seem to penetrate the shell of their self-image.

They find it especially difficult to appreciate and acknowledge their past accomplishments. Once they have achieved their goals, they immediately become less valuable in achieving them.

Once they reach the top of the mountain, they cannot enjoy the view as they are taught to keep climbing. It is as if the peak they have climbed is besieged by the rising waters of the sea. Once they reach a new goal, it seems less impressive because their base of success increases with it.

The problem is their fixed sense of self, which is an image of someone incompetent, unintelligent, or capable on their own. They struggle to truly internalize their accomplishments as their own.

Instead, they focus on the next goal, higher up in the mountains, instead of taking responsibility for their success as they keep trying to solve that internal problem while earning praise. They get stuck in a vicious circle because once a goal is reached, they turn their attention to the next goal on the horizon.

Does contentment lead to mediocrity?

The goal is not to become completely satisfied, so moving toward the next goal is frustrating. This mechanism underlies the ambivalence of this vicious circle and the belief that it is a necessary force pushing them toward their goals. They tend to believe that contentment breeds average or failure because, without the will to overcorrect, their inadequacy will be discovered.

What they don’t realize is that they have the power to succeed no matter how they see themselves. They capitalize on this insecurity to mobilize and instigate through feelings of unworthiness and inferiority. This is not a harmless driver. This causes a fixed dichotomy in how they position themselves: either inferior or superior, but never equal to others. For most successful people, the price of success is alienation and loneliness.

Fear plays a role in maintaining this cycle. If they get too comfortable and complacent, they fear they won’t be motivated to succeed. They are afraid to return to this unmotivated and apathetic child.

Instead, they must realize that they can achieve their goals and even more if they begin to direct the energy and mental space spent on maintaining deficit beliefs into more productive areas. They may start working smarter, not harder, to achieve what matters to them.