2624: Achievement and Self-Worth

[upbeat music] I've always had a, an interesting relationship between achievement and self-worth.

And it's interesting because I think certainly there's value in that.

If you do something and you worked hard to get it or accomplish it or, or whatever, do it, that you should feel really good about that.

But what if you come up short? What if you work really hard to do something and you don't get the result that you're looking for? You lose in the first round.

You don't make the play or actually get chosen to be in the play.

Um, so whatever domain that you are working in, it's not necessarily athletics.

Could be what if you got an A minus instead of straight As.

Uh, so detaching from the actual result, it's such an interesting thing.

What is the right way to go about it? What's the wrong way? Then there's issues of scale on it.

Just 'cause you win or perform at a really high level, at not the highest level, does that diminish the achievement? And should that then affect your worth or your self-worth? I don't know.

It's really interesting.

I was just scrolling through, mindlessly of course, my mouth open, some drool coming out, scrolling through social media, and I saw somebody posted something along the lines of, you know, "Just figured out that it's really important to separate my self-worth from my achievements." And it just sort of got me thinking about it again.

And at first sort of blush, it makes sense.

Sounds like you are exercising restraint and maybe even a little bit of self-compassion.

Because just 'cause you fail at something doesn't mean that you are a failure.

If you are an entrepreneur and your business is struggling, or if you lose your job or your marriage ends, you don't get into the school that you wanted, if you come up a little bit short in a savings goal, it doesn't erase who you are as a human being, and I definitely agree with that.

Yes, of course.

But I do think that, uh, that that is missing something really, really important because not all achievements are equal.

And I've been on this kick over the past several years about really prioritizing and focusing and understanding what really matters.

And when you start...

Well, I think regardless of that, we keep score on things.

Human beings, we're keeping tallies, and it's important to do that.

And I don't think that it's a question of whether or not you're going to measure yourself.

It is what you're going to measure.

And I think it's that deciding what it is that you're going to measure oftentimes are the incorrect things, and that's where you get it sort of twisted.