Are you Goal-oriented? Competitive?
Competitive people define achieving goals and doing great work with whether it’s met THEIR highest expectations.
In my professional career, I noticed that I was achieving what would look like excellent results to most. But. I would find myself feeling like I was falling short.
I wasn't happy.
I wanted it to be more. I could see my own failings. I could see all the mistakes in every project. No one had to tell me about them. I knew. When people
would look at my work and say, that's really great, a part of me could accept the compliment but the larger portion rebelled because I knew it wasn't simply good
enough.
So of course I set on a goal to change this. Many years of personal growth working to eradicate the barriers to experiencing satisfaction didn't completely rid me of the feeling that I wasn't good enough. Then I tried something radical: tell myself it is never, for me, going to be good enough. Saying that it's not good enough – and it NEVER will be – created acceptance that part of myself was critical.
Mark Manson in his blog In Defense of Being Average talks about the tyranny of a culture of exceptionalism. We can be slaves to our idea of achievement or develop self-acceptance to support success. When I began to take all of the energy that went into winning and trying to be good enough towards just relaxing, redirecting it to more meaningful areas of my life. I became more concerned about doing the best I could and accepting the results. This created more freedom to be successful, and more importantly, more happiness for myself and those around me making everything better.
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