Get the better of your hyper-achiever

Today we are gonna talk about hyper achievers -  those of us who sabotage ourselves by measuring themselves by their achievements. 

There is a high chance that you have a hyper achiever if you find yourself often in these situations:  

- You try to impress others by your achievements. 

- You believe that emotions are worthless and only get in a way of your performance.
- Unless you are the best at what you do, there is no need to bother 

- It’s important to you to display only perfection in public

- Life is about achieving and producing results

- You believe that you will be happy when… you achieve something. 

- Your workaholic tendencies cost you relationships. 

For the Hyper-Achiever, self-validation, self-acceptance and self-love are all conditioned on continual performance. It’s a lie - in actuality by believing this you are giving your power away to others. By constantly feeling that you only gain love by achievement you actually expose yourself to a lot of energy sucking stress and anxiety and that results in lower achievement. It also gives your right to be happy away to some time in the future, instead of feeling happy now and acting out of this place of wholeness. 

For those of you that would like to tame their hyper achiever I have a few tips:

1. Dig out a childhood picture of yourself. Stare at it and notice how lovable you are without having done anything. 

2. Ask yourself numerous times throughout the day “how am i feeling?” It will help you get in touch with feeling your emotions. 

3. Recall your thoughts in college, first job, first home etc. Do you remember thinking “I’ll be happy when….” Reflect on how long your happiness actually lasted. 

4. Think of a project you want to hyper achieve on and reframe it as if it was a game. 

5. Think of your kids, your spouse, your colleagues… is your hyper achiever rubbing off on them?

6. Engage in a hobby or project where you absolutely don’t evaluate yourself and only stay process oriented. 

It’s important to remember that those with hyper achiever tendencies have very important strengths.  They are self directed, goal oriented and capable of achieving full potential and inspiring others to do the same. These are wonderful and can be cultivated without the downside of evaluating self worth based on performance.