Stress and Overachievements

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Striving for achievements, success, and status can be a powerful driving force for many of us. It motivates us to develop our potential, express our unique gifts and helps us feel self-confident. Even though achievements and success bring us recognition, money, and many other benefits, statistics have shown that overachievers live shorter than people who are modest achievers. Experts point out at the link between overachievements and stress. For overachievers, the workplace becomes a competitive arena where they have to perform constantly at their peak performance, which cause them a lot of stress. Overachievers invest a lot of their time and energy to beat the competition and reach their goals. In this way, overachiever’s life becomes a continuous race for new accomplishments. Many of them forget that life quality and our inner sense of happiness do not depend only on our achievements. They underestimate the value of relationships, friendships, and social interaction. Overachievers usually fail to develop other areas of their lives. They rarely live happier and healthier than other people. Overachievers tend to follow their business goals compulsively, forgetting that they already pay a big price for their lifestyle, which can reflect on their health through high blood pressure, heart disease, or depression. The article “7 Tips for the Perpetually Stressed out Over-Achievers” gives few tips that can help us reduce stress and recognize whether we fall into an overachieving mode.

• Don’t stress the small stuff.

• You can’t change people or events, you can only change the way you perceive things and how you react.

• The way you react to people and events directly influence your energy, mood, outlook, and the way people perceive you.

• Make sure that you always find the positive in the worst of situations because it makes life much more bearable, enjoyable, and sweeter if you can go
through it happy, positive, and with a smile on your face.

• When you start to get overwhelmed, stressed, anxious, or frustrated, take a minute to step back and take a deep breath, realizing that you are only given
what you can handle.

• Everything will work out in the end. Just try your hardest and the rest will work itself out.

• Everything truly happens for a reason.

According to psychologists, overachievers usually associate their business success with their self-worth. They equate their true self with their outer results. Psychologists suggest avoiding identification with outer success because it is subject to change. Now and then, we can experience the economic turmoil that can cause disturbances in our careers and have nothing to do with our self-worth. High expectations and perfectionism are the basic issues that can provoke anxiety and stress in overachievers. Stepping out from a competitive mindset and letting go of the need to be better than others can help us to find balance in our lives and build satisfying relationships. If we focus on how to be better human being rather than identify ourselves completely with what we are doing will make us more friendly and sociable. To be happy requires a good balance between work and life. It is not easy, but it is certainly worth trying.