I am a recovering overachiever. I no longer want to value myself based on how much I’ve done. I want to feel good as often as I can, not because I’m “productive” enough. I want to enjoy my life! I want others to be able to enjoy their lives! And I want to live in a world of people enjoying themselves. Not one where we’re all grinding ourselves down to fit some status quo.

I see people (myself, my clients, my friends, people out in the world) who are exhausted and unfulfilled. Trying our hardest 24/7 and rarely landing. Rarely permitting ourselves to just be. I think this happens for a lot of reasons. We live in a world where being “busy” is not only the default, but is praised. So there’s external pressure. But also, we keep ourselves busy because, we LITERALLY don’t know what else to do. We are INCAPABLE of relaxing. If we even dare take time away, when we get there, we sit down to “relax,” twiddle our thumbs for five seconds, and then start making plans or pick up our phones. We’re crawling in our skin and reach for ANYTHING to alleviate the discomfort of just inhabiting the present moment, as it is.

Even typing that, my stomach turns. There’s an automatic aversion to SPACE, NOTHINGNESS, SILENCE.

And yet, we CRAVE it. We’re exhausted. We live in a perpetual state of stress. Even the activity we most prefer to “unwind,” (watching TV), activates our body’s stress response. But the idea of just closing our eyes and breathing, not taking in any stimuli to give our brains and bodies a chance to decompress, terrifies us. We say we want rest, we desperately need it, and yet, we make a full-time job of avoiding it. WHAT IS THAT?!

Here’s a glimpse of it in action. What I’m noticing in myself lately, is a tendency to pile on. I tell myself I’m going to make breakfast. I find myself making breakfast while washing a couple dishes and listening to a podcast, and oh, I wanted to sweep the rabbit cage, so I’ll do that while the eggs are cooking. And when I walk over to their cage, I notice a plant that needs to be watered, so I put the broom down and go get the watering can. I need to fill it. And oh, my filtered water pitcher is empty, so I put the watering can down and start filling the pitcher. Now I’m back in the kitchen so I peek at the eggs I remember I’m cooking. 

WOW. Chaos. Exhausting chaos. Jumping from one thing to another without finishing anything. Letting my mind ramble and bounce. Picking one thing up, then setting it down to pick up another. Why? Why not just do a task? Start it, stay on it, and complete it.

Peering under the hood, I think my inner overachiever is calling the shots. Everywhere I turn, something needs my attention. Facing so many somethings, I want to get the most done as efficiently and quickly and simultaneously as possible. The more I cram into each moment, the more time I will have later. Right?

But wait, remember my tangent about how we never actually arrive at this imagined future where we relax and focus on what we want? THAT is the problem with the overachiever program. 

Letting our overachievers run amok presupposes that at some point, we will earn the ability to underachieve. All that hard work and multitasking will finally pay off. Any one else feel like they’re still waiting for that big pay day? There’s a problem with relying on this system to manage our work ethic and life satisfaction. The input and the output aren’t balanced. We’re constantly outputting and running on empty.

So I challenge you to create more balance. See if you can find moments to rest, whether it’s a whole weekend away or two minutes in the middle of the day. Instead of treating them like another space to fill, try letting it be empty space. Try balancing doing with not doing, instead of balancing doing one thing with doing another. Maybe you’ll land in being an achiever. Because for me, being an overachiever feels more like being a never-enjoyer. I’d like that to change.