Today we are going to talk about how to feel better as a high achiever.

First, I’m going to break down why you don’t feel better as a high achiever…because I’m going to share with you my experiences and how the more I achieved, it didn’t actually help the way I felt. Next, I’m going to share with you why you should stop seeking life balance, and instead do this. Lastly, I’m going to help you with actually starting to feel better about yourself and your accomplishments.

Why you don’t feel good as a high achiever.

It worked for me, I’m going to share what I did. The reason I can teach on this is it’s my life. Most of my life, I was a workaholic, I was a high achiever. I would go, I would set a goal, hit it, crush it on my way to set the next goal, next goal, next goal, next goal next goal. I remember, I had a goal to make a million dollars in a year and I hit that in 2013. Then I hit a million dollar month the next year and then I had a million dollar weekend, the year after that. None of those things made me feel any better about myself. In fact, I didn’t have any joy or fulfillment. Maybe you’re watching this and you’re wanting to make more money and you’re thinking “oh, poor high achiever.” Well, listen, if you set big goals, and you hold the intentions, like we teach on here and on our YouTube Channel, you’re going to reach them. The problem is that like Tony Robbins says, “success without fulfillment is the ultimate failure.” Even if you’re not making money, right now, you want to learn how to be more fulfilled and how to have more joy in your life.

Looking back, what I realized I was doing is I was trying to fill a hole with incongruent things. Achievements, awards, accolades, trophies, all of those bragging rights were filling the hole, which was in my self esteem, in my self worth, in the self love I had for myself? It is very common for the workaholic, hustle grinder, to not feel good about themselves. Just to keep grinding, keep grinding, keep grinding, until something medical comes up. I have seen that over and over, where the workaholic, the hustler, the grinder, they’re chasing something, and they think it’s the goal, but none of those goals make them feel any better. Then all of a sudden Whammy, something happens to them physically, something happens to them in their health or their medical condition. All of a sudden, they have to slow down and pay attention. That’s typically when they have a different perspective on their life. Well, you don’t have to go through that to have more fulfillment and I’m going to show you how in this post.

Here’s the reason why you should stop seeking life balance.

I know…sacred territory here, everyone talks about balance. Well, there really is no such thing. There’s no one I know that says that their life is perfectly balanced, “I spend 33% of my time here and 33%….” No one I know is balanced. You are in different seasons of your life when you’re building a business or climbing the corporate ladder versus when you’re a grandparent. Those are different seasons. Instead of looking for life balance, where everything is perfectly mathematically equal, instead, look for a blend, right? Have a blend. I feel good over here with my corporate career or building my business, but I also feel good about myself. I also feel good about me and my family or my wife…et cetera. Look more for a blend, it’s never going to be an equal distribution of your time or energy, there’s going to be one that’s more important to you, there’s going to be one that you need to focus on a little bit more or maybe a lot more. Look for a blend.

The key is presence. If you are building your business or working on your career, and you have that mom guilt going on and you’re thinking about the kids and how you should be with them, you’re not present. You’re only going to get so many results that way… and vice versa. If you’re with the kids at dinner, and you’re pulling out your phone and checking business things and you feel guilty that you should be doing something in your business, then you’re not present there either. Presence is a major, major key. This is something I would encourage you to really strive for everywhere in your life. When you’re working, stay focused on that, right? The time for the kids will come, the time for the spouse will come. When you’re in those moments, whether you’re…well for me, we have our daughter go into gymnastics, we have our son go into soccer…so when you’re with them, be with them.

This is something I struggled with for most of my life. I would play with the kids for two to three, four, maybe five minutes, and then I’m looking at my phone. I have to do stuff…I have to go because something’s going on. I fixed that part of me. Now I’ll spend hours with the kids and don’t even know where the phone is. That is possible when you focus on being present. Be present with them, laugh with them, spend time with them, if we are talking about the kids or whatever.

The same is true of your own self routine. Today someone messaged me and said, “I really need to take a day for self care, but I’m just so busy.” Don’t require a day, you should have in your daily routine, some kind of self care every single day. For me, it’s meditation, I do 90 minutes of meditation minimum every single day, I go to the gym every day. Now, that doesn’t mean that I’m there for two hours, sometimes I’m there for 20 minutes. Sometimes I am there for 30, 45, maybe even an hour. But it’s not an all day process to be working on me and loving on me. Have a self care routine, as well as focus on your career, as well as being present with your kids or present with your family. Look for being blended and being present.

I would love to hear from you.

Before I get to my last point, what do you feel is the one area in your life that
you need the most help with? As far as feeling good about it and it being congruent with who you want to be? Is it the business? Or you’re not focused on your business? Is it the kids? Is it the spouse? Drop me a comment.

How to actually start feeling better about yourself and your accomplishments.      

I have three steps for you that are the absolute keys. It’s what I did, to really improve how I feel about myself and how I feel about my accomplishments and how I feel around the family. I think they will really help you.

The first one comes from our book Time, Money, Freedom. In chapter two, we talked about this concept called “pluck the weeds.” Pluck the weeds, although some people just hear that and they think that means get rid of all the negative people in your life. Not that that’s not a good idea, but that’s not all it is. Pluck the weeds makes you look at every area of your life. It could be your friends, how you show up with your kids, how you show up with your significant other, how you show up in your community, your work out, etc. Pluck the weeds makes you look at every area of your life. Asking yourself which areas are not congruent with who I actually want to be.

The big one that moved the needle for me was my wife and I were at a charity auction. Our neighbor actually came up and said, “Hey, do you see the trip to Belize?” (They auction off these trips to raise money for kids, right?) I’m like, “no.” She goes, “Oh, my God, it’s five day’s, five couples only, private Island, private jet, private yacht, private chef…” and my wife is like, “Ooh!” She’s fired up. She’s excited. To me, that sounds terrible. It sounds like the worst idea ever and I didn’t know why. But I’m like, “Oh, right. Hope we don’t win it…” Right. On the way home, I’m like, What’s wrong with me? Why does that sound so terrible? I honestly didn’t know.

So I worked with a coach of mine. His name’s Elliot Rowe. He’s an incredible coach. He actually helped me, through hypnosis, remember that in the third grade, I had something very major happen. I totally blocked this out. I grew up in a very abused home. My third grade teacher knew something was off (at least that’s my guess). She had me start meeting with a guidance counselor. I started meeting with the guidance counselor and she started asking me questions and it felt pretty good because I never got to talk to anybody. Couldn’t have friends over and I wasn’t allowed to go over to other people’s houses, so I was by myself most of the time. She started asking me questions, it felt good. I started sharing. Well, one day, I showed up to our weekly meeting and my dad, my stepmom were there as well. She proceeds to tell them all the things that I’ve ever told her because she thought they were too outrageous. She thought that it was a cry for help and I just needed more attention at home. One, that was a bad day as you can imagine. Two, that was also the day that…I didn’t realize it…but it’s the day I stopped trusting anybody my whole life up until two years ago, I kept everyone at bay.

I would go and I would speak at an event and rock it out. Then I would rush back to my hotel room because I would just have too much anxiety. I remember I was about to speak at Funnel Hacking Live for my friend Russell Brunson. I literally started hyperventilating out in the lobby, just talking to people and I just had to run back to my room. I had this social anxiety. I didn’t know why. Well, now I know why. Because if someone has been betrayed and is someone who thinks people will betray them, they’ll just keep everyone at bay. There’s probably someone in your life that you just despite your best efforts, you never get a deep conversation out of them. Well, that’s probably because they were betrayed earlier in life and they’re subconsciously blocking you from getting in because then you can’t hurt them. Long story short, we ended up after realizing this, we did end up earning/winning that trip. We went on the Belize trip and it was absolutely amazing. Pluck the weeds is the key that helped me overcome a lifetime of social anxiety, and maybe it can help you too.

Number two, I have a nighttime routine. Every night before bed, I see myself having the things, the traits, the material things, the results, having all the things that I want in my life and that includes relationships etc. I go through the five F’s (you may want to write this down) faith, family, finance, fitness and fun. I go through a visualization exercise in my head. I go through those five F’s before I go to bed every night. Why before bed? because that’s when your subconscious kicks in. Your subconscious is going to listen to the emotions and pay attention to the emotions that you hold most right before bed. I want to hold the emotions of having all the things I want in my life: faith, family, finance, fitness, fun. I’ll go through those and create that visualization, then go to bed. Amazingly, a lot of times the things that I’m visualizing, I get to see in reality, sometimes in days, sometimes in months, but I always am seeing the things that I’ve been visualizing. very, very powerful.

Number three. Now the last tool I’m going to give you is the tool of defiance. Defiance is the name of our next book, it’s not out yet, but defiance is such a major key. There’s going to be times where you don’t want to do something, but you know it would be beneficial to you. Whether it’s being consistent, it’s showing up to that event, whether it’s…investing in that coaching, whether it’s reading that book, whatever, right, whether it’s meeting that person. Defiance is something that has really helped me in pushing past the things that either scared me or I didn’t want to do, but I knew would grow me. One of the examples is when my wife and I attended our first dance competition, and we just attended just to watch. I remember the thought of “oh my god, it would scare the hell out of me to be out there.” My defiance kicked in and that’s when I knew that I had to compete. Two competitions later, we scored first place in salsa and Cha-Cha in our division. It was one of the most powerful experiences of my life because I pushed past that fear. When you push past fear, the only conclusion is, what else can I do

You may want to check this out. 

I hope this was helpful to you. Make sure you share this if you know someone that could use it. Also I mentioned our book Time, Money, Freedom. It is published by Hay House and is a best selling book. If you would like to grab it, it contains our 10 super simple rules to redefine what’s possible and radically reshape your life. Time, Money, Freedom, here is the link, Higdongroup.com/time-money-freedom. I think it will really help you.

Ray Higdon

Play Bigger. Make An Impact.


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