There’s nothing more empowering than to hit a big achievement in my athletic endeavors.
Nailing a new skill on trampoline or flying trapeze can give me a high for days.
Hitting a new PR in the gym sends my confidence soaring.
There’s a reason it’s called a “runner’s high.”
Whether it comes on the athletic field, in the gym, in the boardroom, or in your family life, that feeling permeates our bodies and transfers into every area of life.
Think about the last time you felt the achiever’s high in one domain of your life. A PR in the gym. Closing a big deal. Landing a new client. Breaking through to your kid.
- How did you walk around for the rest of that day?
- What was your mood like when you interacted with other people?
- How much patience did you have for people in your world?
- What else did you feel empowered to take on?
Personally, I notice that when I’m riding high from a big achievement, I am more generous with my time and attention, more patient, more optimistic, more confidence.
Achievement is a wonder drug.
This is its allure. And this is also its risk.
Challenge 1: Drugs Lose Potency
When we’re little, progress comes quickly. We’re born without any ability to control our body. Eventually we learn to sit up. Then crawl. Stand. Walk. Eventually run, jump, skip.
As we get older, the pace of progress slows.
The first time you took a step, everyone cheered and celebrated. Once you were walking for about a week, nobody really celebrated that anymore.
Suddenly walking was old news.
Show us something new.
We mirror this path of progress anytime we learn something new. In the early days, we can build skills relatively quickly. Even small gains feel big and worthy of celebrating.
As we make progress, expectations escalate. What was once a big deal is now taken for granted.
The achievement drug loses potency.
We need bigger wins and bigger gains to feel even half of the achievement high we felt in the early days.
And that’s when we’re making “progress.”
Challenge 2: Progress Isn’t Linear
Not every workout produces PRs. You won’t land every client. Some deals don’t close.
Some workouts are a slog. The body doesn’t always get on board. Clients can stagnate. Deals fall apart. Kids don’t always listen.
Life does not always comply with our desire to see “progress” in the linear way that progress is typically defined in the Land of High Achievers.
Progress can include periods that feel like regression.
Seth Godin calls it The Dip. Others call it the messy middle.
Whatever you call it, this is part of the process. It’s the part that doesn’t feel good.
Every high comes with a low.
Look at nature: the cycles of tides, waves in the ocean, the seasons.
We spiral. We come back around to the same places we were, repeating patterns, falling into the same holes, digging back out.
Challenge 3: The Flip Side of the High
The flip side of the high is the crash.
If I let my achievements buoy my confidence, then what happens when I have days — or months — when I feel stagnant, or even like I’ve regressed?
Think about the last time you struggled in a workout, the deal that fell apart after months of work, the client who disappeared, the failed course launch, the product that didn’t hit.
- How did you walk around for the rest of that day?
- What was your mood like when you interacted with other people?
- How much patience did you have for people in your world?
- What else did you feel empowered to take on?
I don’t know about you, but I’m often a completely different person when I have a bad day in the gym or in my business.
The crash can be hard. Brutal.
If I don’t watch my thoughts and keep myself in check, I can descend quickly into a negative spiral.
I start to doubt everything in my life.
Suddenly I recall every decision I’ve ever made that didn’t work out as I desired. All the wrong turns and mis-steps. All the places I screwed up. My life is a failure. I have no purpose in this world. What am I even doing here?
I can go to that deep, dark place in a heartbeat.
THIS is the problem with the achiever’s high.
The higher the high, the steeper and swifter the fall.
This isn’t philosophy. It’s physics.
The Difference Between the Highs and Lows
What’s the difference between the highs and lows?
Generally only the outcome I got on that specific day.
The more I’m invested in an outcome, the steeper the crash when I don’t hit it or feel like I’m making progress toward it.
Of course, the story of failure is an illusion, because progress isn’t linear. Sometimes, months of setbacks work like a sling shot, positioning us to catapult into a greater victory.
The only thing we can control is the effort. Showing up. Doing the work.
Most of the time, we have little to no control over the outcome.
You can put in the same effort, and dozens of unseen factors conspire to influence and impact your results.
You happened to meet the right person or be in the right place at the right time. Someone happened to stumble upon your work and share it and it went viral. You were born in the right time to the right parents in the right community. You had the support you needed. You had privilege that others didn’t. Your nervous system cooperated and helped you feel safe enough to lift heavy or make that call.
We don’t realize how little we control. Until we step back and look at the situation through a broader lens. This is the power of awareness.
The Achiever’s High is a Disempowering Illusion
The Achiever’s High is amazing. It feels good.
It’s also disempowering.
By drawing confidence from achievements, and by giving into the lows of the days when I struggle, I am investing my confidence in some external factor that I do not control.
I am giving my power away.
In the long run, that’s not useful.
Why would you want your confidence, self-trust, or sense of worth to be based on factors that you cannot control?
It’s much more effective and sustainable to root my confidence in what I can control: my efforts, my outlook, how I show up.
How to Prevent the Crash
To prevent the crash, we must fuel the high from a source that has no side effects.
This means giving up the achievement drug as the fuel for confidence (as well as self-worth, self-love, and self-trust).
It’s called finding equanimity.
Treating the big wins and the big losses the same. No charge for either.
Value the process over the outcome. Set process metrics rather than outcome metrics.
When I can maintain my clarity and awareness, I can stop the descent by stepping back and recognizing that nothing changed in my effort. I still showed up and did the work.
To be clear, this is easier said than done.
This, too, is a practice.
And so even here, even in the practice of finding equanimity, we must assess ourselves not by whether we maintained equanimity, but by whether we at least attempted to step back, see the bigger picture, and release attachment to the outcome.
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