Why is my self-worth tied to my achievements?

I have hit rock bottom twice and both times it happened right after I got the thing I was aiming at. The first was a middle management corporate job earning the income I thought I wanted, and it wasn't the experience that I was expecting.

What I was really after was how it all looked. The life I thought I wanted was about being visually appealing, so I could look like I had it figured out. I wanted to be impressive. Impressive by my position, my money, my success, to show that I had made it.

But it didn't matter how much I made. Even when I was making more than I knew what to do with, ten, sometimes eleven grand a week, the more I did the more disconnected I got from the future I wanted. By then I couldn't have told you what that future was, because I had already done the things I thought I wanted.

Why is my self-worth attached to achievements?

Because succeeding has been answering an unconscious question for you, and its so reliable, there's not need to check back on it. A group member put that question into one sentence.

"So I think it gives me evidence that I am enough, which contradicts the underlying belief that I'm not enough. Does that make sense?"

He said it more directly later in the session. "When I succeed, I validate that I am enough. I am good enough. Whereas the underlying belief is that I'm not good enough, in general."

Asked what that feels like, he went to the buzz. "You know when you close a high-ticket sales call, and you're absolutely buzzing? That sort of buzz is probably the closest thing I can see of that." That was his read on it too: the extrinsic validation links back into that internal feeling of, oh, I'm enough.

Can you ever really feel a sense of accomplishment, a sense of validation, a sense of receiving that from other people — if you can't see it within yourself?

Daniel Lawson

Why is my self-worth tied to my job?

Because your work is where the evidence is reliable. You are already good at it, somebody comes back to you about it, and that keeps happening. Then anything new gets measured against the same feeling, and almost nothing matches it, because you are putting a first attempt up against the thing you have been practising the longest, right?

A group member described what that did to a sport he had picked up. "That's probably why I didn't play padel as much, because I was like, oh, I'm not that good yet, and everyone else is badass." So he stopped going.

because you're not giving yourself permission to suck at something new.

Daniel Lawson

A group member shared what the second column feels like from inside it, talking about what he had invested in himself.

"It still feels to me like — yeah, selfish is the word that keeps coming back. It feels like I'm just doing this for me. And I've invested a fuck ton of money to get to this point, and I'm still not generating an income. I know it's coming, but it kind of makes me feel guilty too."

He has decades of discipline behind him. What he hasn't had back yet is the time and the money he put in, and while that is still outstanding, investing in himself reads to him as selfish.

What's left when the validation is gone?

You find out when the achieving stops. One participant stepped away from his business and the question came with him. "I've only ever done my business for validation reasons. So now that that's been taken away, what's left?"

He said the business had been a means of fun, believe it or not, and then gave the reasons it was really for: purpose, getting out of bed, drive, being someone. "I became driven, I became motivated, I became, in my eyes, probably unconsciously, someone." And keeping it going had not been about wanting it either. "It was fear of probably what people thought of me. It was fear of failure."

Asked what he would want instead, he came to purpose outside the business, financial security for his family, and doing something he really flipping enjoys. The enjoyment was on the list and he wasn't sure yet what it would be.

If business was already taken care of and the money was already there and you had all the success in the world, well, then what's left?

Daniel Lawson

I have been asking people that for years, and many of us have never had to answer it, because the achieving kept coming, so the question never got asked.

And the validation doesn't leave with the business. It goes looking for the next thing that makes you someone, which might be the next business or the next title. The risk is that whatever comes next gets picked for the same reason as the last thing.

What do you experience while you are still no good at it?

Not much at first, and that is worth knowing before you start. The buzz you get from closing something you are good at is not going to show up here. One participant realised he had been going into new things expecting the exact same stimulus his work gave him, so each one got, ah, this is not it, let's move on.

Another described the same thing from the other end, about something he had been meaning to start for a long time. "And the feeling of, yet I'm not good enough. So maybe I should wait a little bit and just do the work on myself first, and then start. So postponing the starting."

A third said, "I'm afraid to be a beginner."

The achieving does arrive, and it still doesn't settle anything. One participant could list, accurately, how far their skills had come, and went straight back to not good enough. The evidence and the belief sit side by side without touching, which is why more achieving doesn't fix this. And it's also why telling yourself you are enough bounces off: your brain answers an affirmation with, where's the evidence, and it answers a demonstration with, ha, you caught me.

We all start in the same place. We all suck at starting something new. We all suck at something we've never done before.

Daniel Lawson

I look back at my earliest stuff and I think, oh god, I can't believe that's still there to be seen, it's so bad. But I leave it there for that same reminder.

So pick something you have never done, and pick it knowing you won't be good at it for a while. Then get the acknowledgement while you are still rubbish at it, because acknowledging your inputs rather than your outcomes is the other place the evidence can come from, and it's the one that doesn't need you to be good first. It only counts for something that stretched you, which rules out your work, and it has to be said to someone else. Sharing an acknowledgement is bringing accountability to yourself and being seen in it. A group member said his unprompted, for the first time: his self-respect and his self-worth, putting it to the front. Not after a win. He just said it, in front of the others.

Common questions

Why is my self-worth tied to my productivity?

Because producing is the evidence you can get on any given day, without waiting for somebody to hand it to you. A good output means a good person and an empty afternoon means the opposite, which is why rest is uncomfortable rather than restful. What changes it is being acknowledged for something that had no output in it at all.

Is it bad to get self-worth from achieving?

The achieving is load bearing. It is a lot of why you are respected and why people lean on you. What it costs you is everything you would be bad at first, because having only the single place the evidence can come from rules all of that out, and a lot of what's worth starting now is in there.

How do I stop needing the win to feel okay?

You keep the win and add something next to it. Go and be a beginner at something, get acknowledged for showing up to it rather than for being good at it, and say so to someone else. The feeling comes later than a win does, and it comes from within you rather than from someone for being impressive.

What if I start something new and quit again?

Then look at what you expected it to give you. A lot of the time a new thing gets taken on hunting the same buzz the work gives, and when that buzz doesn't come it reads as the wrong hobby. Drop the expectation of the same feeling before you drop the activity.

If this is you

If achieving is where your worth has come from, then you already know how to commit to something and see it all the way through, and plenty of people are where they are because you did that. What comes next is pointing that at something you won't be good at for a while, where there is nothing to show anybody at the end of it. Other people around you doing the same thing is what makes that stage go. Somebody asks how it's going before you have anything to report, and being asked is the other kind of evidence. And then you've got something you're into, rather than another line on the list of what you've delivered.

The Reconnected Man and The Reconnected Woman are the group where we have these conversations together.