Why Are Overachievers So Unhappy?

People who succeed in the business, academic, or nonprofit worlds typically have jumped through a lot of hoops to get to the level of success they enjoy—a college education, oftentimes an advanced degree, and years of work experience. They’ve paid their dues working their way up the ladder.

Many have been programmed over the years to be sensitive to the expectations of those around them. Each successive phase of their journey required proving themselves. In my coaching practice, I encounter many experienced professionals who are highly successful by external measures but are not satisfied inside.

Excessive Focus on External Cues

One such client is Bill.* He is Ivy League–educated with an MBA from a top-ten business school. He is employed by a blue-chip firm in a role in which he’s successful and well paid, yet he wonders what his real purpose is.

He followed the directions that many parents and guidance counselors point to as the ideal path for bright and accomplished high school students—leverage your intellect, extracurricular accomplishments, and strong work ethic to gain admittance into a top university, then parlay that into a postgraduate degree from a top school, then get a high-paying job with a corporation. Like Bill, many students are told that after their ticket is punched, they’ll be recruited by employers seeking the best and brightest.

With this formula, many people achieve high levels of professional success as measured by their accomplishments, level of responsibility, and income. What I often see is that many will follow this well-worn path faithfully without stopping to check in with themselves. They may never even contemplate what their ultimate goal is and whether, once attained, it will bring them satisfaction. In fact, they may have been so focused on external cues that they never asked themselves what they really want.

The Trap of High Achievement

Tom DeLong is a Harvard Business School professor and author who has studied what he calls “high-need-for-achievement” types. He defines this group as “driven, ambitious, [and] goal oriented.” DeLong observes that often these individuals become addicted to the success that they’ve accomplished and expect that they will continue to enjoy the same level of success. They can become anxious and sometimes even frozen about the possibility of failing.[1]

In an interview on HBR.com from May 2011,[2] DeLong elaborated on this concept:

They figured out that they had this drive. And I think they began to leverage it. And they also began to compete. And it’s not just to be number one once or twice, but it’s to be number one all the time. And so what happens gradually is that the external criteria for success becomes the norm. So we’re not looking at our own talents and saying, how have I grown and developed these talents that I’ve realized over the years? I say, well, when I go to this five-year reunion, how am I going to compare with all those people that I competed with? And so it’s that success is only defined in terms of how I do compared to other people. And that, in itself, becomes addictive and becomes its own pattern.

Addiction to External Validation

As a coach, I’ve observed the pattern that DeLong describes with clients, and I’ve experienced it personally. High achievers can become so conditioned to reacting to external factors and measuring their success by what others say or think that they may even lose the ability to read their own internal cues that help them know what they want.

Like a compass can reverse polarity when a strong magnet is situated in its vicinity, this external focus becomes the magnet that pulls them away from knowing what their own values and desires are. Essentially, they cease to relate to their own definition of success (if they ever even had one).

Like my client Bill, it can be a slow and delicate process helping “high-need-to-achieve” types discover their own desires, but it’s what is required if they want to get back in touch with the source of their own joy.

__________________________________________

This article is excerpted from Winning the Game of Work: Career Happiness and Success on Your Own Terms by Terry Boyle McDougall (2020, New Degree Press).

For more information on how to be successful and happy , stay tuned for the next article in this series: "How to Become a Happy Overachiever"

__________________________________________

*Name has been changed.

[1] DeLong, Thomas J. Flying Without a Net: Turn Fear of Change into Fuel for Success. Harvard Business Review Press, 2011. p. x (preface).

[2] Sarah Green, “The Hidden Demons of High Achievers” interview with Thomas DeLong, HBR.com, https://hbr.org/2011/05/the-hidden-demons-of-high-achi, May 2011.