I Don’t Want To Be A High Achiever Anymore | E98

Gino Cordone [00:00:12]:
Hello and welcome to episode 98 of Working towards our purpose. In today’s episode, we’re going to talk about not wanting to be a high achiever anymore. But before we get into that, we’re going to take a moment, like we always do, to slow down and just check in with ourselves, see where we’re at today. Alrighty. Hopefully you got a second to get calm and see how you’re feeling today. For me, I was feeling pretty, pretty not good this morning, pretty bad. And I was able to pick my guitar up for a little bit of time and that really made me feel better. It always, always seems to.

Gino Cordone [00:01:13]:
Yeah, just not feeling good last night and today. Not even really sure why. But yeah, just, just playing some music really helped change my mindset, get myself out of a negative loop. So, yeah, reminder to do the things that you, that you love. But yeah, so getting into today’s episode. Yeah, the term high achiever, it’s such an interesting term. Like, I don’t, I guess I’ve always kind of identified with it but I never really thought like, why. And I’ve been doing that.

Gino Cordone [00:01:53]:
I’ve been thinking about it a lot recently for some reason. It came up in therapy the other day and I was like, sort of frustrated at the term, like high achiever. And I was like, I don’t want to be that anymore. So. Yeah. So what is a high achiever? What does it mean to you? To me, I guess it always meant like you were trying hard and like you were trying to do your best all the time and yeah, you know, you cared about what you did and you wanted to be the best that you could. But I think oftentimes it’s, it’s like a comparison thing where you’re comparing yourself to the people around you. And I was never like, I guess a high achiever in school because I was never like that great in school.

Gino Cordone [00:02:38]:
But yeah, I don’t even really know where the term, where I first identified with the term. But I guess certainly since starting side businesses and thinking about how to be successful outside of corporate America, I’ve definitely always been like, oh yeah, working a lot is a good thing and being a high achiever is a good thing. And yeah, I’m just, I guess I’m starting to see the negative sides of that term high achiever. And well, first off, it just, you’re comparing yourself to others and that’s never helpful for your mental health. For my mental health. So I think that’s one thing. But like, what I, I guess what really started all this was like, I’m noticing. I’m noticing a pattern in myself that I don’t want to adhere to anymore.

Gino Cordone [00:03:33]:
And it’s the pattern of always keeping myself busy and always making myself do things. And because, like, you know, when you’re doing like your. Your own thing, side business, a podcast like this music, like you’re always setting your own standards of doing things. I. I told myself that I need to put out an episode a week. Like nobody’s. Nobody’s telling me to do that, but. But for me it feels like it has to be done.

Gino Cordone [00:03:58]:
And again, I set that standard. But I get to this point where I kind of burn myself out and I’m not sure why I do that. And yeah, I’ve just been sort of burnt out and sick and tired of always forcing myself to do something. I’d like to rest. I’m finding that my body wants to rest or like my mind wants to rest, to let go and to be able to find the next thing. I feel very much like sort of in a transition phase, maybe just letting go of old ideas of myself, which is not new. I’ve been doing that for a while. It kind of comes and goes.

Gino Cordone [00:04:43]:
And I think when you’re finding who you are, which I think I still am, which is okay because there’s no time limit on it, that you’re always kind of adjusting and. Yeah, I’m just noticing that I don’t like this high achiever idea that I have of myself. And it’s not like I called myself this and it was an outwardly thing, but it was more so an inwardly feeling that I felt like I had to go and do these things because I’m somebody who gets things done and who, yeah, I don’t know, just does too many things. And one indication was like the other day I was doing some music work with my friend and at the end of it, we kind of just talked and checked in and I realized how frustrated I was and my patience had been short. And we got to talking and. And we slowed down and we had a nice conversation and I was able to express how I’ve been feeling. And I didn’t even realize it. That’s crazy.

Gino Cordone [00:05:55]:
I didn’t even realize I’ve been. I don’t know. That’s so weird to me. I need to be. No, I’m not gonna say that. I would like to be a little bit more in tune, I guess, with that. But anyways, I was grateful for the moment because it showed me how much I force myself to do things like how I never have a quiet moment. I’m always doing something.

Gino Cordone [00:06:20]:
I’m always thinking about the thing that I need to be doing. Especially with this podcast with all the stuff that I like, the reels and the YouTube shorts and stuff like that. I don’t enjoy any of that, but I think that I have to do it. So I think I’ve said before, I’m going to get to episode 100 of this podcast and then I’m going to take take a bit of a hiatus and just think about what’s not working for me and not the things that you have to do or that I make myself do, because I think I have to, but thinking about what gives back to me and how can I do it in a way that’s, again, sustainable. I always talk about how you can do things sustainably. But yeah, anyways, I just realized in this conversation with my friend that I’m like, I can’t relax. And I almost, like, said that pridefully, like, oh, I can never relax. I need to do things.

Gino Cordone [00:07:13]:
But, like, I’m deciding that, like, I don’t want that anymore. Like, I don’t want to not be able to relax. Like, that’s terrible. Your body needs to relax. You need sleep. You need a relax from work. Like, even if it’s not paid work, it’s like, it’s still work. And because sometimes I don’t get paid for the work that I do, for most of the work that I do, I see it as not being good enough yet I need to keep doing it in order to make it successful.

Gino Cordone [00:07:44]:
And I know these things in theory don’t make sense, but it’s still just old patterns that I fall into. And, yeah, I don’t know, I want something different. And I think, I think that it’s hard. It’s hard to change old patterns that you’ve kept your whole life or that you’ve fallen into your whole life or that you’ve felt were your identity your whole life. And it takes effort to make that change. And it takes a lot of mental energy, a lot of push and pull of, yes, I want this change. And then the next five minutes you’re like, well, that means you’re lazy and you should be doing more work. It’s because you haven’t the back and forth.

Gino Cordone [00:08:36]:
I don’t know if you’ve ever felt that. The familiarness of your old self versus your new self or the person that you’d like to be. So, yeah, change is hard. And I feel like this is part of a transition of not taking this identity of high achiever anymore and much more just trying to exist more calmly and more peacefully. And I heard this thing recently. There’s this guy on Instagram that plays guitar that I like and he writes these little sort of, I don’t know, motivational or just thoughts that are kind of in line with this podcast. And he said something about the most meaningful changes can sometimes happen when you choose calm versus chaos. And I’m shortening that.

Gino Cordone [00:09:24]:
It wasn’t exactly written like that, but that really kind of spoke to me and I was like, yeah, wow, that’s such a good reminder for me because I often choose chaos or choose to do more because I think it’ll make me successful. But sometimes the rest is what brings you the idea of where you need to go and brings you the clarity of who you want to be. So yeah, I think that’s kind of like. It reminded me of like high achiever because like, I guess the high achiever in me would be like, oh, we got to do more. We have to wake up early. We have to go do all these other things. We have to do seven different things. So it gives you, you know, more chances of success or whatever.

Gino Cordone [00:10:12]:
And yeah, I just, I want to choose more calm versus chaos. And you know, there’s obviously a time to work hard and all that. But yeah, like, rest is so important. And another thing that happened recently that I think that this is. That goes in line with this episode is like yesterday I was doing some work, I was at my job and we were in a park and this is random, but I’m not going to give all the details. It. Anyways, I was waiting for my coworker to go to the bathroom at this public bathroom in this park. And I just sat by a tree.

Gino Cordone [00:10:50]:
It was a really cool old looking tree. And I was like, whoa, this is a cool tree. And I just leaned on it and looked up through the branches and it was super pretty. And for a moment I heard this, I guess, voice or thought, and it was like, wow, it feels good to rest or to do nothing. It feels good to do that. And I think I was probably only able to do that because I was on the clock still getting paid, so it wasn’t totally doing nothing. But yeah, that was an interesting thought to me. That was a shocking thought.

Gino Cordone [00:11:33]:
I was like, yeah, wow, dang. I really need to find out how I can find more rest and just exist because that feels good. And a lot of times I don’t give myself that Opportunity to go and rest or to go do nothing in a park. I got to read a book or I got to do something productive and I always just have to be doing something. And I don’t know if you can relate with that, but that’s kind of what I mean with high achievers. I always feel like I have to be doing something that’s productive or learning or helpful. And it’s really hard for me to just do nothing and relax and without numbing because it’s different than just binge watching TV or YouTube or whatever. To me that feels different.

Gino Cordone [00:12:19]:
That’s not rest, that’s agitating my nervous system, but just going outside, it reminded me how important it is for me to be outside and. And maybe that’s a good place to start is going outside and trying to rest and not bringing a book. Just like looking at the trees or the birds or something. So yeah, hopefully this made sense. I feel like there wasn’t a super straight strategic strategy to this episode, but it’s part of, I think where I’m going of just letting go a bit. Trying to lose some of the control of things and yeah, trying to not always be doing something and. Trying to rewrite the story that I have for myself of being a high achiever and being like, you know what, I don’t want that anymore. I would rather have calm and peace and yeah, see where that goes.

Gino Cordone [00:13:24]:
You know, it starts with identifying it and knowing and seeing that it’s something that I don’t want. So yeah, maybe more to come on this. I’m not sure those are my thoughts for today. Hopefully it’s helpful if you’re interested in being more kind to yourself. I have a free seven day guide of softening your inner critic. It’s in the download. You can find the link anywhere in the show notes description. But yeah, that’s all I got for you today.

Gino Cordone [00:13:59]:
I’ll see you on another episode real soon. Thank you for listening and have a great day.