Is this you?
Since 2013, I have been a coach, and recently most of my clients have been individuals who are considered “high achievers. ”
High achievers are those who typically rank in the top 5% of their respective areas, be it in business and finance, health and fitness, or dating and relationships.
Others frequently admire their achievements or feel intense envy. They often excel academically with little effort, making success appear effortless to everyone else.
The Paradox of Success
Why do individuals who achieve the most often find themselves feeling the least content?
Having coached high achievers for over ten years—those who possess everything that others yearn for, such as status, power, wealth, and abundant relationships—I’ve come to a clear realization: increased success often leads to diminished fulfillment.
It’s akin to an unquenchable thirst. As incomes rise, financial anxiety seems to grow rather than diminish. Burnout is frequently experienced.
Beneath those overly polished celebration posts seen on LinkedIn lies a deep-rooted dissatisfaction, feelings of Imposter Syndrome, and an increasing fear that life lacks genuine meaning.
In this article, I intend to convey what I’ve learned from the most “successful” individuals I’ve supported, the silent struggles underlying their accomplishments, and the flawed thought patterns that hinder true satisfaction.
I also wish to present solutions—methods by which high achievers and driven individuals can genuinely relish the benefits of their hard work, free from guilt, anxiety, stress, and emotional numbness.
This will examine the unseen psychological pitfalls faced by high achievers.
The Fear of Happiness — Cherophobia
What if your inability to enjoy success stems from a hidden fear of being happy?
I want to introduce you to a relatively unknown yet remarkably prevalent feeling, termed “cherophobia”: the fear or avoidance of joy, pleasure, and celebration.
The characteristics of many high achievers often arise from early pressure to excel beyond their peers, to make their parents proud, and to gain approval and love by impressing people through their achievements.
While they may experience fleeting highs from their successes, this is accompanied by an underlying fear of losing it all. Since the affection they received was dependent on their accomplishments, any success feels like tempting fate to restore balance.
The superstitious thought is: “When things improve, something unfortunate must follow. ”
This fear keeps leaders and ambitious individuals trapped in a cycle of constant achievement, never feeling truly “safe” enough to unwind or take pleasure in their successes.
Reality vs Imagination — High Achievers Fear Apparitions
Is your brain conjuring dangers that aren’t real and controlling your life because of them?
This is something everyone experiences to a degree; the brain often confuses perceived threats with actual risks.
High achievers, who tend to strategize for their objectives, possess vivid imaginations. This can lead to anxieties regarding situations that there is no proof a) will occur, and b) even if they did occur, would have negative consequences.
Concerns about experiencing public failures, lagging behind, or being perceived as arrogant and excluded are common fears among those who strive for success when it comes to savoring their accomplishments.
Many billionaires amass significant wealth, yet they spend so much energy pursuing money that they rarely take the time to relish in spending it. The ironic truth is that there tends to be a connection between success and the difficulty of enjoying what one has achieved.
High achievers frequently devote considerable time to heeding their thoughts and accepting their inner dialogue as truth. Being “independent” individuals, they view the inner critic that catastrophizes situations as a reliable guide, believing it is encouraging and safeguarding them.
Your imagination often outweighs your logical thinking, and the achievements you’ve reached only reinforce the belief that your mind was aiding your journey. It doesn’t cross your mind that your successes may have come despite your thoughts, not because of them.
To truly appreciate your triumphs, one must confront their thoughts and engage in analytical thinking whenever it suggests something will “go wrong” without any real proof of harm.
The Perfectionism Trap — Why Nothing Feels Sufficient
What leads high achievers to accomplish more than others… yet still feel unsuccessful?
The answer lies in their relentless pursuit of more. If reaching goals actually brought them a sense of fulfillment, they would likely take time to relax now and then. Instead, after hitting one target, they immediately move on to the next, expanding their ambitions yet again.
The issue is that they can never truly succeed due to what I refer to as the “Yeah but” self-assessment flaw. Regardless of their accomplishments, they can always envision things going “better,” transforming every accomplishment into a perceived failure. It wasn’t flawless; it wasn’t swift enough; it couldn’t compare to someone else’s achievement, and so on. Their creativity relentlessly frames their successes as insufficient.
However, it often feels nearly satisfactory. Thus, they quickly dive back into their efforts, striving to learn from the last “shortcoming” and finally get it “right. ” Unfortunately, this feeling of inadequacy can apply across the board – even an Olympic champion might find fault with their victory – it wasn’t a personal best, it didn’t break a world record, it wasn’t a perfect score, and so on.
And undoubtedly, the emotional toll of unfair self-assessment results in exhaustion stemming from feelings of shame, guilt, stress, and despair. Such emotions will have a detrimental impact on your performance, meaning that even if achieving perfection were feasible (which it is not), you would still fall short as you would be running on empty.
Paradoxically, the urge to achieve perfection guarantees subpar performance.
Moreover, this pressure stifles creativity, establishing unnecessary and counterproductive rules that are largely irrelevant to efficiency and value. Perfectionism leads you to impose foolish constraints that diminish the chances of discovering optimal solutions or remaining genuine.
The unexpected remedy is to alleviate pressure, disregard unwarranted rules, and assess yourself in an optimistic light, concentrating solely on your strengths and the dedication you apply in living authentically. Labeling something as a “failure” does little to boost motivation, performance, or enjoyment of life. In fact, this is often the reason you do it: to stop yourself from appreciating your accomplishments.
The Comparison Spiral — The Link Between Success and Social Distress
Why do accomplished individuals feel increasingly miserable as their success grows?
There exists a phenomenon that could be termed the damaging achievement cycle: establish a target → put in maximum effort → attain success → experience a fleeting high → compare yourself to others who appear more successful (or envision someone better) → descend into a void as your efforts seem pointless → seek to regain that high by setting a new target.
A crucial component of this harmful cycle is the act of comparing oneself to others. High achievers typically emerge from backgrounds where they were conditioned to seek approval externally rather than to evaluate themselves. Regardless of whether your feedback was predominantly positive or negative, you learned to gauge your worth by consulting others or observing them.
There will always be someone who seems “better” than you, and even when you can’t find such a person, you will fabricate one in your mind, perceiving this imagined individual as real. You have been conditioned to think that you must be the best or nothing, so this comparison inevitably erodes your self-confidence.
Sometimes, you may even find yourself comparing to your past self, believing it to be a healthier approach. However, this is equally detrimental. Your memories may not be entirely accurate, and your past self likely faced different circumstances. Just because you lifted 100Kg last week doesn’t guarantee that you can do it today, as you are a different person in the present.
Your dependence on external validation traps you in a game-like reality where your chances of winning are minimal, and even success merely leads to the need to begin a new challenge the next day.
Persisting in this game for too long can result in a loss of your identity, your capacity to feel authentic joy (beyond fleeting moments of achievement), and a failure to understand how to evaluate success from within.
