Vulnerabilities of an over-achiever
I have found myself constantly avoiding the reality of seed time and harvest- it sucks. It sucks to wait for a new business to make profit, it sucks to apply for so many jobs and get no appointment letter, and it sucks creating content with no viewers.
Whenever I got tired of waiting for a project to yield fruit, I create another. Only to realize the law applies to not just what we create or do, but it’s an innate part of life- we cannot avoid it.
It isn’t easy to wait, the mindset of an overachiever is NOW. I have lived in the confinement of an overachiever for too long that it has produced its own fruits- fear of constantly failing, imposter syndrome, anxiety, depression and self-doubt.
Of all these fruits, I battled the most with anxiety- I was always anxious about an outcome, so much that I didn’t wait to fail before declaring myself a failure in a particular venture or business.
In constantly hopping from venture to venture, I hadn’t given myself time to succeed or fail at anything. My inconsistency didn’t give me a chance to know my strengths and weaknesses. I was doing everything and yet doing nothing.
If indeed I was failing, I had nothing to measure what went wrong and if I was succeeding I didn’t know, because when things got tough or were slowly progressing beyond my patience, I will switch.
My overachieving mindset was groomed by a lot of people who saw huge potential in me- I have always been that girl who might win an award for 25 under 25, young scholar award- generally, I was destined to succeed at a young age.
And this put pressure on me, so whatever was eating time and taking too long to yield, I will stop watering it and plant something else. I didn't want to disappoint the people who had put so much faith in me, I didn’t want to give chance for success after 25 years- I wanted to succeed NOW!
In trying to attain success in the world, I stopped doing what I loved. I was constantly looking for the easiest and fastest root to success- sadly, there is no such.
My mindset shift came when I recovered from anxiety and depression. I knew something had to change in what I knew as success. I picked up abandoned projects one after the order and studied what I did wrong and what I can do better.
I’m back to the things I love doing like writing and teaching. I’m taking days to shift my focus to myself. If I’m going to be successful it’s going to be at my pace and doing what I enjoy.
I’m not rushing anywhere- Forbes list or not, I stay winning.
As long as the earth exsists, planting and harvesting, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never stop. Gen 8:22 (GW)
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