Every so often, I read a book (or listen to it or listen and read it at the same time) that spawns 1000 blog posts and enters my bones.
The latest one of these (and I haven't had one like this for a long while) is Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman. You can buy it on Wordery here or download it as an audiobook here.
So, there are now 1000 concepts from this book that I need to tell you about, but you won't want me to do that because it will get boring, so just go and get the book yourself. Let me point you in the right direction by talking about his description of insecure overachievers.
He discusses this concept in detail and gives himself tremendous validity by defining himself as an insecure overachiever. This is what society produces at our stage, in our place, at our level, isn't it?
And so, as I write this blog, I'm somewhere else, which I'll talk about later, perhaps next week. While I'm somewhere else, I have to give a lecture somewhere else, online, for someone else. I've got this group of people from all around the world listening to me talk, and all of us on the call are insecure overachievers (perhaps, just perhaps, apart from me, or perhaps I'm a recovering insecure overachiever).
And so, no longer do I want to be the people on the call or the other speaker; no longer do I want to be the people that I see on the stages at the Congresses. No longer am I concerned that someone else has sold their practice for millions of pounds, and I haven't. No longer am I worried that someone finished a triathlon that I didn't do.
I don't know when I crossed the line here, but I did and reading Burkeman's book is like looking out a window to the past of how I was and reassuring myself that I'm not so much there anymore.
I've realised that I feel peace now more than I have done, perhaps forever, and I'm not sure how I got there; I think it was just trying to explore these things, trying to look at them, trying to be self-aware, trying to find out more about myself.
The problem with insecure overachievers (or recovering insecure overachievers) is that achievement is never enough; it just makes us more insecure.
And so, in this chapter of his book, in this place where he describes it, he recites a quote from someone else (paraphrase).
"Successful people are just walking anxiety disorders maximised for productivity".
You don't always have to be ticking things off; you don't always have to be achieving, and, in fact, when you get past that, I think the converse happens; I think you actually achieve more, at least certainly of the things that feed your soul.
Blog Post Number - 3936