Super-Achiever On The Run

I’m an over-achiever. Maybe a super-achiever. Super Achiever? Once upon a time, I was driven by fear, the worst motivation for setting goals, or anything, really. I got my energy from anxiety. It drove me to fill every moment with “something worthwhile,” kept me on a constant quest for achievement, and might have turned me into a workaholic. Either way it was an unsustainable, unhealthy mind-set conditioned and reinforced in me by toxic people.

I was trained from a very young age to chase goal posts. You know the kind. They’re always being moved, just when you get to where they were a minute ago. Failing to anticipate when and where a goal post might be moved had painful, confusing, and humiliating consequences, because anticipation can only ever be guesswork, but what else can you do?

With pain, confusion, and humiliation come shame, guilt, overwhelm, low level fear, acute fear, dread, hyper-awareness, anxiety, and the unshakable feeling that you’re responsible for everyone and everything and all their feelings and the honor of all the ancestors and the sake of every child yet unborn and whether there’s enough water in the desert and food on the planet and the world spins or falls out of orbit.

It’s a lot. Can you relate? It’s okay if you can, it’s okay if you can’t.

Half the time I felt driven. Half the time I felt chased. I was compelled, 24/7, to fill my time with value — all 24 hours, all 7 days, on a loop. A treadmill. A nightmare; the closer I got to being enough, the further it got away from me. When I crashed, I didn’t just break. I shattered. I spent 10 years doing nothing. I was stuck on the floor in a million tiny pieces.

This is what 10 years of doing nothing looks like through the lens to an over-achiever: I moved my family across country twice, learned how to be a single mom, and learned an entirely new industry (from part time receptionist at a car repair shop to full time service writer in 18 months). I did all this while ghostwriting books, freelancing articles, and working on the shitty first draft of a novel, raising teenagers, navigating divorce, succumbing to depression, and rebuilding my life and identity under a huge umbrella of shame.

There was also a lot of downtime, or what my mean-girl brain calls wasted time, when she says I actively failed at life. A lot of time on the couch, a lot of days in bed. Watching TV, not reading. A lot of avoiding errands, being late to pick up the kids, losing interest in cooking, losing interest in doing things with friends, ignoring emails, ignoring housework. Ignoring myself.

Half the time I was numb. Half the time I was thinking. Processing. Moving away from the influence of toxic people, through depression, and out the other side where I could shake off fear as a motivator because I had gained clarity. It took therapy and doing the work, and building some of my own tools for resiliency. It took time and it was worth it. Mean-girl brain is just being mean. And wrong.

My greatest epiphany was this: The people I could never satisfy would go to their graves believing the worst about me, and nothing I could do would change their minds. And then they’d be dead and I could stop worrying … but what if I stopped worrying now and let them live until they die thinking whatever they think, and I did my own thing anyway?

BOOM. FREEDOM. Step one, at least. I realized the cage door was open and I went ahead and walked out.

Without fear, though, there was nothing to motivate me. I really enjoy achieving. I like wearing multiple hats. I love variety and deadlines and the thrill of pushing myself to try new things.

But I felt like I was on one side of a vast ocean while who I wanted to be again was on the other. Fear used to be the bridge. Without it, I didn’t know how to get anywhere, let alone to the things I love.

I felt like half a person. Knowing who I could be, but not knowing how.

I understand what this feels like on a cellular level; there’s no room here to judge others. I remember knowing I had deep pools of creativity within me, great stores of energy and possibility, and the burning desire to craft my own identity as a woman and a writer on this planet. And like I was peering at the foundation of my identity like it was miles away, somewhere on the horizon, on the other side of the world. Inside but out of my reach.

I was too far away from valuing myself as my own motivator, but I got there. I talk about how I found the bridge to the person I was waiting to become in Re-examine the Take Away To Connect To You.