Achievers need to grow.
They need to perpetually do more, make more, accomplish more. A LOT more.
For an achiever, success is always just out of reach.
Maybe this is you?
The fact that you’re making more money today than you’ve ever made in your life is not exciting. What you’ve DONE is no longer juicy. You want more. You look to the horizon and see a new point you should be at and covet it. Constantly.
You look at others with bigger businesses, more money, more success and feel sick inside. If you’re being honest, you secretly resent “those” people. What a joke they are. Of course they’re successful…look at how stupid their audience is. They’re willing to cheat people and lie, and I would never do that. They’re willing to neglect their family. They screw people over all the time. I won’t do that. It’s probably all fake anyway.
Then you sit and stew in your unhappiness and jealousy and rot from the inside.
You KNOW you could do more, but DAMMIT, you just can’t get yourself to do the work. You have honest intentions and truly want to be disciplined…and you can be for a while. But then life happens and you slip a little. Then a LOT. Then you’re back to the same lame routine of getting nothing done, two steps forward, two (and hopefully not three) steps back, just grinding it out every day. Maybe you’re just not cut out to be a great leader, marketer, salesperson, entrepreneur. *Sigh.*
But hope burns eternal…so you and other achievers go to events, join coaching programs and read books (okay, skim books…or, more truthfully, buy books with the intention to read them but never do). You learn a lot. You make a looooong list of things you need to get done when you go home. But then, a week later, that pile of things you’re “gonna get done THIS time” is sitting collecting dust somewhere, unimplemented.
You’re overwhelmed, unsure of what to work on now, what to do next, and really struggling to figure out what truly is MOST important. So you wake up, put in the hours and just keep doing what you’ve always done because even though it’s NOT really serving you, it at least pays the bills – and you need that income. As the dwarfs sang, “I owe, I owe, so off to work I go.” Or something like that.
This, folks, is what burnout is.
You get tired of putting in a LOT of effort without making significant progress at the pace you want. You’re only eking out small wins, and small wins don’t give you the dopamine hit you crave – and THAT’S what makes you feel burned-out.
So, what do we do about this?
Well, for starters, recognizing you’re caught in this perpetual cycle of “never enough” is helpful. The first step in any addiction program is to admit you have a problem – because this IS a problem. You can’t succeed by constantly feeling like a failure, constantly telling yourself you’re not enough, constantly comparing yourself to those ahead of you, diminishing your confidence. You must look back every once in a while to see just how far you’ve come.
Second, eliminate the noise.
Most people are living in utter chaos, interrupted, disrupted and distracted. They can’t pay attention to anything long enough to get anything DONE. They “snack” on information, articles, courses and coaching programs but never pick one and stick with it. Why? Because they’re getting a dopamine hit from buying the “new” thing or starting the “new” plan, NOT from following through with the hard work.
Hardly anyone’s tired from their work. They’re exhausted from spinning their wheels in the chaos.
And finally, find your “people.” Entrepreneurs don’t relax by going on vacation or having more “me” time. Employees can take time off and not think about their work because if it doesn’t get done, it’s not a lot of skin off their back. WE stress the entire time we’re away because we know the problems back home aren’t going away – they’re getting WORSE.
What relaxes achievers are ANSWERS and SOLUTIONS to the problems we’re dealing with – and the best people to help you are peers who have the same ambitions, same goals, and are running on the same track and can share their models, systems, solutions and experience. Talking with someone who truly “gets it” is hugely therapeutic.
My friend Brian Kurtz said to me, “Robin, you should never have to feel like you have to prove yourself to anyone. You’ve already earned that.” He’s right about me. He’s also right about you – because the fact that you’ve started and grown your business…heck, the fact that you’re even reading this, and reading this far…tells me you’re NOT a failure, you’re NOT lazy and you’re NOT broken.
You’re an achiever…and it’s just how you’re wired.
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