EASE: Escaping Achievement; Seeking Experiences
I'm reaching out because I'm looking for my
people—specifically, those of you who were identified early as brilliant or
"high potential," became driven by what others said that you should
accomplish, and now feel spent, jaded, disillusioned, or ready to tackle that
addiction to forever climbing the ladder.
I’m looking for the people who know what it’s like to spend decades
running a race you never actually signed up for.
For those who knew me back in the day, you remember me as
the kid who, at age 13, wrote a book “disproving algebra.” From that moment on, I was surrounded by a
chorus of voices telling me what I could be, what I should do,
and how much "potential" I had to change the world.
Like many of us, I internalized that chorus. For decades,
my entire operating system was driven by trying to be the person other people
expected me to be. I made choices based on what looked best on a CV or what
would validate my "potential," rather than what I actually wanted. I
spent decades training my nervous system to treat achievement as oxygen.
To put it bluntly: I feel like I “won” the game. I got a
bunch of degrees, a bunch of patents and publications, built and sold a
hospitality company, and retired early. By most metrics we were trained to
chase, I reached the finish line.
But here is the catch: Now that I’m here, I’m finding it
extraordinarily difficult to actually stop running.
It's been seven years since I retired, and I'm finally in
the process of defeating what I call "productivity shame"—that deeply
embedded programming that says our worth is measured by our output, our
achievements, our visible success. I'm actively in recovery from achievement
addiction, learning to build a life around authentic experiences rather than
external validation. It’s a strange irony: I literally wrote a novel in 2007
called The Mobius Strip that is explicitly about rejecting
status and not basing self-worth on achievement—yet I find myself still struggling
to live by the very philosophy I wrote down.
Even stranger, despite having "made it," I am
still haunted by the feeling that I didn’t live up to the astronomical
expectations people placed on us back then. I know rationally that I have no
obligation to meet the projections of past professors or the "13-year-old
prodigy" narrative, and I know that trying to do so is detrimental to my
happiness.
I am actively working on defeating this
"productivity shame" and recovering from what I’ve come to see as a
genuine addiction to achievement. I am
finally in the process of recovery. I am actively dismantling the shame
and learning how to just be instead of do.
But recovery is lonely work, and I don't want to do it in
a vacuum.
I’m looking to connect (or reconnect) with people who are
walking this same path. I want to find the others—the former "gifted
kids," the burnt-out high achievers, the people who were extraordinarily
successful on paper but are now realizing they were hopelessly addicted to the
climb.
I’m jokingly calling this support group EASE:
Escaping Achievement; Seeking Experiences.
I'm not looking for advice or people to tell me
"just relax" or "be grateful for what you have." I have plenty of strategies and am moving in
the right direction. I am looking for solidarity. I want to build a small
circle of mutual support, empathy, and validation for those of us who are
trying to deprogram ourselves from the cult of achievement.
If you read this and feel a pang of recognition—if you
are tired of the endless rat race and want to talk about what life looks like
on the other side of "ambition"—please reach out. Let’s compare notes
on how to stop running.