A Recovering Overachiever
How I am finally living life on my own terms
Every Friday my mother and I get together for a “date night.” It usually involves ordering takeout or cooking. This past Friday, my mom decided to gift me some photos from my childhood as well as two stacks of folders labeled “Awards — Don-Don.” I am grateful to have a mother who has kept up with literally everything that pertains to me since birth. It was awesome to look back over all of these artifacts that have contributed to who I am today. Even more interesting is how many of the experiences I had forgotten. The fact that my mom has kept those things lets me know that she is proud of me and that means a lot to me.
When I think about how most people would describe me and how I would describe myself, the main answer would be “overachiever.” Even as an adult, until recently, I have been obsessed with my “success.” When I was 16 years old I created a 10 year plan — and held myself accountable for achieving everything on the list.
When I was in High School, I always had at least two jobs. I worked in retail, I interned at a Newspaper and I also worked in fast food. I worked while also maintaining an A and B average. I catalogued the Awards and Certificates that my mom has collected and it was 94 in total:
Scholarships 15
Honor Roll 27
Completion Certificates 4
Leadership 1
Participation Certificates 21
Attendance 5
Appreciation Certificates 2
Good Behavior (a.k.a. “Citizenship) 11
Science Fair 2
Sports 2
Diplomas 3
In cataloguing my Awards, I realized that from a very young age I became addicted to achievement and external validation. When I think about the good behavior awards, I am reminded of socialization that occurs in elementary and middle school. I was rewarded for “following the rules” and for being compliant. This has translated in many ways to my behavior as an adult. I am not as open to taking risks. I have followed the rules — even when they were unfair or unreasonable.
I am addicted to winning. When I was in High School I used to run track. I can remember a particularly tough meet where I fell over a hurdle. I cried and my team had to really help me get it together. First, there were more events that I needed to participate in that day and second, I had to move forward. My experiences in sports really helped me to learn perseverance, especially against competitors who were better and in situations where collaboration and teamwork were required. When I graduated from High School I applied for hundreds of scholarships in order to fully finance my undergraduate education. Due to that and the “Beat the Odds” Scholarship that I received, Oprah Winfrey’s show reached out to my High School and they were going to do a feature on me. It came down to two candidates — myself and another young woman from another High School and they ended up choosing the other woman. My school had started to prepare for Oprah’s visit and I can remember how crushed I felt that they ultimately did not select me. The thing about being addicted to winning and winning seemingly so effortlessly is that it makes the losses that much harder. As an adult — being told “no,” being rejected for opportunities and losing in general has been really hard for me. I personalize the “no’s.” I’ve developed a process for helping me to cope with the losses, and that involves planting a new seed for every rejection or every loss. Although it helps me emotionally, it’s still one of the residual affects of being addicted to achievement.
My achievement addiction continued through adulthood. The first time I earned a “C” in my life was in college and I cried. I worked incredibly hard and couldn’t accept the fact that my best was a “C.” I continued to micromanage my life in my early twenties. I earned perfect attendance during my first 5 years as a teacher. Once I transitioned into Non-profit Management, I was selected as an Ebony Power 100 winner, received recognition from New York University’s Hip Hop Education Center and I was selected by Deloris Jordan, Michael Jordan’s Mother to receive a Community Award in her honor. None of these awards were opportunities that I applied for so it felt good to be selected. It can be easy to get caught up in wanting that pat on the back or recognition and feeling bitter, irritated or frankly jealous when you feel slighted, ignored or passed over.
While I appreciate the recognition and feel honored to have been selected, I have also learned that many of the 30 Under 30, Top 100 and other lists are much more complicated and political than they seem. In some cases, they are marketing campaigns meant to drive traffic. In other cases, particularly for nonprofits — they are used to sell tickets to events and to raise the profile of organizations and attract media attention. In a lot of cases there are personal relationships where people are lobbying or advocating for someone they know. I have watched people who deserve to be recognized never mentioned on the lists or never profiled in media. Does that mean that they are any less because they don’t have that external validation? Does that mean that their contributions aren’t as important? There are roughly 1.56+ million nonprofits registered in the United States over 31 million businesses. It is not numerically possible for even the majority of them to be recognized — yet they are still serving their customers, making a profit, improving their communities, etc.
The question that I have been asking myself lately is what do I truly want. Not what should I want? Not what others want for me. What do I want?
At one point I wanted to be a lawyer because of the positive reaction of adults and because I believed that I would make a lot of money. I had the pleasure of interning for a lawyer when I was 14 and quickly decided on another career path.
Overachieving Children become Neurotic Adults. We are perfectionists, we are rigid, we are no-nonsense and we have low tolerance. We can be impatient. Many of us suffer from anxiety, have panic attacks and can have really dark moments when things aren’t working out according to our perfect plan.
Our desire for approval from our teachers and our parents becomes desire for approval from lovers, bosses and social circles. People exploit that addiction for achievement making us overwork ourselves, neglect our passions and work ourselves sometimes literally to death for the good of the team and the boss.
We also often hold our children to an impossible standard and live our dreams vicariously through them. When I taught High School, I can remember students who had straight A’s for multiple years feeling like one “B” was a death sentence. The same way that I thought I was complete failure because I earned a “C” in college. It is delusional. We can lose touch with reality. I was once told by a parent that my job was to get their child into Harvard. At the time their child had just started High School and truly had no respected opinion or agency over their future. We become “helicopter” parents and our children’s accomplishments become extensions of our own.
I am now in my mid 30s, and for the first time in my life I am centering my wants and needs. For the first time in my life I am using my own internal measuring stick to measure freedom, success, happiness, and pleasure. I don’t need external approval or validation to know that I’m intelligent, am worthy and deserving of everything I want (and not because I have to “work” for it or somehow do something to earn those things). Whether or not I receive another certificate, award or media feature — my work matters, my ideas matter and my existence matters. If you too are addicted to achievement, I encourage you to spend more time interrogating your choices, reimagining what success truly looks like for you and overall offering yourself more grace, more unstructured time and more “Ls.”
