Excellence Without Burnout
When you want to excel, the phrase “not good enough” can be an incredibly powerful motivator. Never being satisfied can drive you to great heights. But when your sense of self-worth gets tied up with your pursuit of excellence, there is a cost. It can lead to burnout, damage your relationships, develop illness, cause injury, and make it difficult to enjoy the benefits of everything you work for.
Still, hard work, consistent effort, and a perseverant spirit yield results. It just does. And if you’ve ever worked diligently for something, you know this. But what I’ve found in my personal practice and my work with clients is that you’ve got to approach that desire to excel and surpass limitations from a place of self-love.
Think of it this way, you’ve been gifted a body and a mind that have biologically evolved to grow when challenged. Whether you push yourself or not does not affect your worth as a human being. However, when you do put in the time and effort to excel and surpass your limitations, you are cultivating your potential—you’re growing. It doesn’t mean you are better or worse, it just means that you are taking advantage of what you’ve been given. It’s only a small shift in motivation, but it makes all the difference.
The tricky thing is the desire to prove one’s worth is subtle and often goes unnoticed.
We all want to be seen, appreciated, validated, and even celebrated, and there is nothing wrong with being motivated by these desires. But when your sense of self-worth gets tied up with these desires, you inadvertently allow what others think of you to define your value. And when driven from such a place, you can never stop because you can never really know what anybody thinks of you. You push further than is productive, and you can’t relax.
Here are a couple of questions: how often do you feel validated? Do you ever take a moment and say, ‘ahhh wow, I really did well,’ and then sit with that, receive it, and enjoy it before moving on to the next thing?
To be honest, when I first tried to do so for myself, there was fear. When I tried to receive it, there was this little voice that said: “Careful now. If you become too content, you’ll stop growing.” And so, the survival instinct kicked back in, and I got back to it. Still growing, mind you., yet, never enjoying the fruits of my labour.
Now, that little voice is valid. And the truth is it’s helped me get far and go beyond my limits. But it’s not who I want running the show. Because what’s the point of all this growth if I can’t reap the harvest? What’s the point if I can’t be with the people I love because I’m too busy proving that I deserve it?
What if there was a different way to motivate yourself? A way that allowed you to consistently keep growing and persevering without forcing yourself to crash and burn?
The good news is I’ve learned how to motivate myself with a more sustainable fuel than proving my self-worth, and I help my clients do the same. We do so by learning to work with constancy and perseverance, not from a place of lack but from a place of celebration.
Imagine no longer letting the voice of survival dictate your actions but choosing to thrive instead. Growing like the lone tree on a mountain top—always reaching in every direction, weathering the storm, and standing stable with whatever arises.
Join me every Tuesday Night, 7 - 8:30 PM, online and in person at Espace BE, where we put these concepts into practice.
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