People who are motivated to achieve are always looking to improve, drive quality and love getting stuck into complex problems.
They are also notoriously bad at self care which over time can become a problem because this group of people is more prone to exhaustion, overwhelm and burnout because of their high drive/ high quality attitude. The main reason for their tricky relationship with self care is that high achievers always strive to be the best they can be at everything they do – and this includes self care regimes! As a result, they often overdo it and go past the point where the activity they are engaging in is good for them. Typical problems they experience can be:
- Extreme discipline in diets that get fast results but over time can be damaging to health
- Always looking to lift heavier and heavier weights
- They start by going for a run and within no time commit to running marathons!
- They take EVERY activity they engage in, to the max including training as teachers or entering competitions
- They give up quickly on activities they believe they aren’t very good at or find boring (like meditation)
None of these things are bad in themselves, but they are not necessarily conducive to self-care because they put stress on the body rather than giving it time and space to rejuvenate and recover.
To stay healthy, high achievers need to apply a slightly different mindset to this section of their lives:
- View self care as a foundation for self improvement rather than another avenue for it
- Start with a self care activity you know you can easily maintain and build up from there rather than over committing yourself at the start
- Take care you are not creating an addiction to goal attainment by including some self care activities that are not goal oriented
- Build up a rhythm of self care so that it becomes part of your routine ‘just what you do’ rather than adding to your already packed schedule
If you’d like to take a deeper dive into our training, coaching and personal development services and free resources, explore the Monkey Puzzle website.
