Taming Your Overachiever Mindset

In a world full of pressure to always perform at our best, it’s easy to forget to listen to ourselves. We get so used to taking the average of our best days as the standard, or even the upper limits, that we forget something important: just because you didn’t perform as well as you did two days ago doesn’t mean you didn’t give your best.

Your best varies from day to day, and even from moment to moment.

Think about it. How do you perform after a good night’s rest, feeling healthy and energized?
And how do you perform when you barely slept, feel run down, or are coming down with a cold?

It’s not the same. It can’t be.

Yet we still expect ourselves to match our top-level performance. every. single. day.

It’s ingrained in us. Competitions, exams, success stories…
No one asks how you were doing that day. They only look at the output. The result.

But we know.
We know how we were feeling in each moment - if we haven’t lost our intuition. If we haven’t lost the ability to listen to ourselves, to our bodies, to our energy, to our mindset.

I personally struggled with this pressure for years. I always pushed myself to perform at the best level - not the best I could do that day - but the best. Period.

And yes, it helped me get far.
But it also pushed me to the edge.
Because I wasn’t kind to myself. And at its worst, it turned into self-destructive behaviour.

But once you become aware of that fine line - “the best” vs. “the best possible today” - you start to soften. You loosen the grip.

And maybe, at some point, you even realize that you don’t always have to reach “the best.”
Sometimes good is good enough.
Sometimes trying is more than enough.

The most important thing is learning to listen to ourselves again - to our bodies, our minds, our energy - and to adjust accordingly.

To give ourselves more grace. And more love.

And I realized:

When I stop pushing against my energy and start working with it, everything flows so. much. easier.

Awareness, again, is the first step.
Here are some things that helped me loosen my overachiever mindset:

• Yoga

• Meditation

• Journaling

• The affirmation “I’m good enough”

These are my anchors.
When I’m overwhelmed, meditation never fails to bring me back to myself.
But it takes practice. You can’t expect to sit down once, totally disconnected from yourself, and magically feel calm. Build a regular practice first, and then it becomes a powerful tool in your toolbox.

Pressuring yourself to perform at your highest every single day almost guarantees the opposite.

When you tune out your intuition - how your body feels, how your mind feels, where your energy truly is - you push past your limits. You deplete yourself. You empty your reserves. Until, eventually, something breaks. Your body gets sick. Your mind shuts down. You burn out.

By forcing ourselves to function at our highest level all the time, we walk straight toward our lowest.

It will teach you lessons, yes.
But it will also leave scars.

So be gentle with yourself.
Be kind.
Love yourself.

And act like it.