How to Finally Be Enough: A Guide for High Achievers Battling Chronic Insecurity
Emily’s eyes slowly open to the glow of soft light around her, distant voices echoing from the brightly-lit hallway. Her stomach writhes in pain as her fingers clench the hospital sheets. Emily’s opportunity for relief has vanished and she knows it. Tears begin to streak across the thin fabric of the pillow. How did this happen?
Just hours ago her life was completely different. That afternoon Emily received her city’s prestigious “30 Under 30” award for exceptional young adults. Though only 21, she had already outperformed most of her fellow recipients. She is captain of her university’s championship-winning Division I track & field team and has made the Dean’s List every semester. This doesn’t count the honors sorority she’s part of or the years spent becoming fluent in Italian in preparation for her upcoming semester abroad. Yet with each camera flash and pat on the back, her heart quickens. Do they know what she knows?
At the award ceremony her favorite aunt embraces her asking, “How do you do it?! How do you keep going?! You’re such an inspiration!” Emily shrugs off the question with a quick laugh and smile. There is no answer. There’s never been one. This is just who she is — she’s always been the one to push herself harder, achieve more and never stop. That’s why it was such a surprise when Emily’s roommate came home that night to find her collapsed on the floor next to a bottle of pain medication. Only depressed people commit suicide, not winners like Emily.
There are millions of Emilys waking up each morning. They’re male and female, young and old, in our own families and living across the world. Each one struggles with the same set of questions — when am I going to be enough, and will I be able to make it until then?
A Raw Reality
To say we’re facing an epidemic of anxiety is a vast understatement.
Anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness in the United States affecting 40 million adults, or 18% of the population. Millennials (20–38 years old) seem to bear the brunt of this mental battle as they are repeatedly ranked as the most stressed generation alive, followed closely by Generation X. Yet it does not seem Millennials will hold this title for long. Today’s college students consistently rank anxiety as their primary concern (41.6%), followed by depression (36.4%) and relationship problems (35.8%). Rates of anxiety among America’s youth continue to skyrocket and show no signs of slowing down.
In this sea of growing stress and tension there is one demographic which seems especially susceptible to the strain of anxiety. They’re often hidden in plain sight and are more likely to be celebrated role models than causes of concern. They’re the “High Potential Individuals.”
The High Potential Profile
High Potential Individuals (HPIs) are natural born “doers”. Energetic, analytical and naturally curious, HPIs posses an innate drive to create and achieve. They love interesting challenges that let them work hard while expressing themselves. They’re natural entrepreneurs, inventors, innovators, creators and developers.
Being a High Potential Individual is not always easy. There are great benefits: strong drive, enthusiasm and a natural impulse to live in honest authenticity. When presented with the right circumstances HPIs are virtually unstoppable. They can climb walls and endure discomforts that would stop all but the strongest and most determined.
But there are challenges as well. A highly creative mind that’s always “on” often floods HPIs with more ideas than they can act on at once. Many struggle with being distracted by their own pursuits, jumping between projects and working constantly without always having much to show for it. Yet none of these challenges are truly crippling. HPIs tend to mature and learn how create priorities, get focused and navigate these obstacles over the years of their lives.
Yet not all threats are equal. Like the single arrow that struck down Achilles in Homer’s Iliad, there is one especially toxic challenge that can strike down a High Potential Individual like nothing else — the fear of not being enough.
Welcome to the Microscope
Our culture of anxiety is perhaps only matched by our culture of insecurity. Social media has provided us with the ability to compare ourselves to others like never before. Millennials are by far the heaviest users even though 48% of “constant checkers” worry about its impact on their long-term physical and mental health.
America’s educational system has played a major role as well. High school students strive to become “well rounded” enough to meet the unknown wants of a faceless college admissions officer while children in kindergarten are being taught standardized test preparation instead of educational play.
All of this is compounded by generations of parents who (largely unknowingly) passed on their own fears and insecurities to their children. While family intervention programs have shown tremendous promise, there remains a cultural expectation that “good” parents keep firm control over their children and eliminate any threat of physical and mental suffering.
We have created a society that fears pain — and where there is fear of pain there is ample room for anxiety.
For some this culture of anxious insecurity is crippling. It locks them in fear and depression, causing them to sink lower and lower in a cycle of inaction and suffering.
But for others (especially HPIs) this anxiety is fuel. If we’re not worthwhile yet then fine — we’ll make ourselves enough. We’ll achieve so much and go so far that nobody can possibly question our value or worth. Name the mountain and we’ll climb it. Tell us how far to run and we’ll sprint it. Just show us what we need to achieve in order to matter and stand back as we provide a brilliant firework display of power, tenacity and action.
That is, of course, until we burn out in a fiery explosion and crash.
Racing to Ground Zero
Suzy Favor Hamilton is one of the most successful middle-distance runners in recent American history. In college she won nine NCAA championships and twenty three Big 10 titles. She ranked first in the nation for the 1,500 meter event twice in her career and competed in the Olympics not once but three times.
Yet this mask of victory hid a void of darkness within. From youth she was plagued by a deep sense of worthlessness, anxiety and pain. She battled suicidal thoughts, developed an eating disorder and attempted to kill herself while in college. Her obsession with running grew as she became convinced it was the solution to all of her problems. Success would resolve everything — she would be fixed, her chaotic family would be fixed and everything would be okay. All she needed to do was win.
Unfortunately, this pressure to succeed often prevented Hamilton from achieving her full potential. She repeatedly choked during major events and never quite excelled at the international level. During the final 50 meters of the 1,500m event in Sydney, Hamilton — overwhelmingly regarded as the favorite for gold — realized she wasn’t going to medal. Instead of accepting failure she feigned injury and fell. The ever-present whispers of depression and suicidal thoughts came back with aggression. Soon Hamilton retired. If competitive running wasn’t going to fix her she had to find something else.
New goals came in like clockwork. She became a mother, realtor and motivational speaker. It wasn’t enough. The void within continued to grow. Incorrectly prescribed antidepressants sent her into a manic frenzy of thrill-seeking activity. She went skydiving and had threesomes with escorts in Vegas. Finally she became an escort herself. Always the high achiever, Hamilton became the second highest in Vegas and placed among the top ten in the world. The void within her remained but she was finally high enough to avoid it. The flood of sex, money and attention was intoxicating. Hamilton was finally on top of the world — until it all came crashing down.
A jilted client revealed her identity and exposed her to the world. Athletic sponsorships were cut and countless relationships terminated. Terrified that she’d end up entirely alone, Hamilton finally reached out and received the professional help she always needed. None of her countless successes saved her. No external victory made her enough. It was only by going within and cultivating her own sense of self-love and self-worth that she found what she was looking for all along.
It’s Not “What” but “Why”
Soon after receiving my professional coaching certification I was tapped to provide mental and athletic performance coaching for around 40 Division I NCAA track & field/cross country athletes at a major university in Pittsburgh. These were exceptional athletes on an exceptional team. Our program regularly won championships and sent athletes to Olympic trials. It was a true honor to know each of these exceptional young men and women.
My favorite question for them was simple: “Why do you run?”
Almost always, answers fell into one of two groups:
The first group never really understood the question. “Uh…” they would stammer, “I don’t know. Why wouldn’t I? I love running. It’s who I am — I just run. I’m sorry Coach, I don’t think I’m answering your question very well.”
Oh, they answered it perfectly.
The second group was quite different. While they used similar words to the first group their tone and delivery was off. They sounded like ones who were speaking to convince, especially ones who were speaking to convince themselves. With gentle prodding the real answers started pouring out. “Well…I run because when I run my parents love me. I run because when I win, I matter. I run because it defines me. I run because I’m afraid of what would happen if I stop.”
At quick glance both groups looked the same. Both groups won races, lost races, won championships and were beat in the final seconds. Only across months and years could the differences be seen. While the first group remained (generally) healthy and progressed month by month, the second was all over the place. They would win big at one meet only to fail hard during the next. In training they cycled between running as athletic powerhouses and chaotic disasters. Anxiety disorders (especially eating disorders) ran rampant. Injuries abounded as their bodies struggled to keep up with the physical toll of competitive running paired with crippling stress and anxiety.
The first group simply ran. The second group ran equally hard while carrying a 500 pound weight named “pressure” around their necks. It didn’t matter how well we trained them — until they became mental athletes few were able to achieve the success they were objectively capable of.
The Power of Choice
If mankind was born with a superpower it would undoubtedly be Free Will.
The power of choice wields more impact than any other weapon man can wield. This is not a new realization — it represents the core of stoic philosophy championed by Epictetus, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius and more. This philosophy would ultimately give rise to everything from professional coaching to cognitive behavioral therapy, the current gold standard for the treatment of anxiety disorders.
Yet for all the decisions we are freely able to make, one decision reigns supreme above all — the way we decide to see ourselves.
Our self imagine defines everything from the careers we choose to the people we marry. It determines how we eat, how much we weigh, how we spend our Saturday nights and how we deal with stress and pressure. If we believe our self-worth is perpetually at risk we will constantly fight to protect it, consciously or unconsciously. But if we believe self-worth is our birthright — that no matter what has or has not happened during our lives our worth remains consistent and unchanged — we free ourselves from the grip of anxiety. We finally start to remember who we really are.
The Logic of Anxiety
High Potential Individuals are by far my favorite coaching clients. They’re motivated, hard working and almost always take on exciting projects that express their unique potential within the first months of working together. Yet HPIs can present a formidable challenge to those who work with them. While the natural tenacity and stubbornness of HPIs are among their greatest assets it can make the initial shift away from anxiety surprisingly difficult.
There is logic behind this fear of change. The general theme is as follows:
A) My achievements define my self-worth
B) My fear and anxiety force me to achieve
C) Without my fear and anxiety, I might lose the drive to achieve
D) Achieving worth is too important — I must stay anxious in order to protect my worth
There’s a significant lack of self-trust in this thought process. We do not trust ourselves to take action and work hard without the whips of anxiety snapping at our backs. This is fascinating, especially since HPIs are natural doers and achievers.
If we really want to free ourselves from this cycle of anxiety we must strike at the belief underlying this all — the belief that self-worth is achieved. Until that myth is destroyed no change of great matter can be accomplish. Our self-worth is our birthright. It’s not a trophy we get from others to put on our shelves.
We are already enough.
The Freedom of Unconditional Self-Worth
Few paradigms are more liberating than unconditional self-worth. We, by our own accord, can choose to be enough.
Where there is self-worth there is freedom. No more do we have to figure out who we should be or what we should do. We don’t have to try to find a task or experience that is so great and so grand it will validate us in every way and give us the meaning we’ve been looking for. We’re validated simply because we exist.
This is a powerful place for High Potential Individuals. It frees us to risk big and create from a place of self-expression instead of self-protection. We don’t have to hide, mask ourselves or figure out what everyone else wants from us. For natural “doers” this is paradise. We can take action and dare to fail without internalizing any of it. The world is our sandbox. We’re free to create at will.
Dismantling the Arguments of Fear
There is no logical argument that supports achievement-based self-worth. Achievements that “matter” vary from society to society and change drastically over time. This is to say nothing of the extremely conflicted ways we deal with “worth” through money and status. None of us want our children to become prostitutes or porn stars, yet we pay these individuals handsomely while we ask teachers to purchase classroom supplies out of their own pockets.
There is no objective yardstick for defining “worth.” Any attempt to do so is entirely subjective. There’s a reason why many of the great religions claim all are equal in the eyes of God.
The argument against unconditional self-worth is far more emotional than logical. To believe in unconditional self-worth is to reject a world view many of us were born into and feel safe in, even if it’s slowly killing us. Like those trapped in abusive relationships we’re afraid of the unknown. “Will it really be better? Will I really be able to figure this out? I’m not happy here but I’m not dead either. Maybe I’ll wait a little bit more.”
Achieving from a Place of Worth
Who would you admire more: the person who always wanted to open a restaurant but instead chose to run a marathon, write a book, climb a mountain and travel abroad? Or, the person who faced their fears, got to work and opened their bistro’s doors with a beaming pride two years later?
There is a dramatic shift that takes place when we work from a place of unconditional self-worth. Instead of pursuing a thousand miscellaneous tasks we begin to focus on a select few that truly mean something great to us. Boom-and-bust cycles phase out as 1) they are no longer tolerated and 2) there’s no need for overnight success. There’s no need to prove our worth every second of every day. We can let our projects form strong roots and grow.
Anxiety promises meaningful achievement while delivering none. Pursuing our deepest dreams requires us to be open, vulnerable and take action without any guarantee of victory. Anxiety allows none of this. Instead, it speaks to us with a silver tongue and compels us to step back, slow down and try something else. The pain of failure is far too great to risk. Anxiety would rather have us pursue a thousand meaningless victories instead of the one which matters most.
Moving From High Potential to High Performance
All of us can approach any decision in life from one of two places: weakness or strength. We can give in to the siren call of anxiety and assume ourselves to be fragile, helpless individuals surrounded by danger we’re too weak to face. Or, we can make the conscious decision to see ourselves as strong, resilient and able to weather any storm and face any pain. Even if we fall and cut ourselves we know our wound is already beginning to heal.
To choose unconditional self-worth is to choose strength. To see ourselves as whole and complete is to set ourselves free. Instead of spending our energy battling ourselves we can pour it into those endeavors which connect with our hearts. We’re already enough. We’ve already won. We’re not here for the game; we’re here for the victory lap. It’s time to reclaim that which is already ours.
Inner Strength Training
Living from a place of unconditional self-worth and strength is nothing more than a habit. All that’s needed is short-term focus, work and dedication — all things HPIs excel at.
We need to believe we are of unconditional self-worth, act on this belief and consistently reinforce it.
This is why I recently launched the Inner Strength Movement. It is a central location to do all of the above and more. There are three basic steps:
- Make a personal declaration of strength and self-worth
- Create a daily self-training workout and pursue an “inner strength project” that expresses your worth and potential within
- Record victories and reinforce the image of who you were born to be
The Inner Strength Movement is a community based on creating habits of strength from the ground up. All are welcome. There’s no fee or barrier to entry. Professional 1-on-1 coaching services are available as well.
This is a call to action. It’s a counter-culture rebellion against a growing storm of anxiety, insecurity and fear. We do not need to live as if we are weak, frail and worthless. We can trust our fire and light within.
If you are a High Potential Individual who knows they have something more to give, who knows they would take off if they could shed the weight of anxiety and fear — I truly hope you will join us. Give it 30 days and see what happens: http://innerstrengthmovement.com/
James “J” Stamatelos is a professional coach who specializes in helping people find confidence and inner peace by building strong, resilient relationships with themselves. He is fully remote and has worked with clients from across the United States, Canada, and Europe. Visit https://jamesjstamatelos.com/ to learn more.