Hey Everyone, Any other over-achievers here? I feel like, since a young age, I've always wanted to the best at everything I care about (hobbies, physical feats, my education, etc.) and often wonder what made me that way, especially because so many of my peers were not the same... It got particularly bad during university, where for a while, I did almost nothing outside of my studies, which drove me to a dark place and made me take a break and reflect on my life choices... I live a more balanced life now, and am less perfectionistic, but a large part of me is still obsessed with doing my absolute best at the things I care about, often at the expense of other areas of life. I've also become better at comparing myself to my previous self, and not to others. After all, we all have our own path to walk in life, and constantly comparing to others doesn't lead anywhere good. So, what factors in life make some people over-achievers and others not? Is it due to early childhood experiences, genetics, and/or something else? Interested to read your thoughts. According to this interesting article (Overachiever Personality: Traits, Challenges, and Balance): "An overachiever personality is a pattern of consistently exceeding expectations, driven primarily by anxiety about inadequacy rather than by genuine enjoyment of the work itself. The distinction sounds subtle, but it’s the whole story: two people can produce identical results while having wildly different internal experiences of getting there. Psychologists distinguish this from simple competence or talent. An overachiever isn’t just good at things. They’re compelled to prove, repeatedly, that they’re good enough to exist without apology. That compulsion often traces back to ambitious personality traits and the drive to excel, but with a critical twist: ambition points toward something desired, while overachievement often runs away from something feared."

For a long time, I confused assertiveness with danger. If I disagreed with someone, said no, raised an objection, expressed what I actually thought, or simply made a decision somebody didn't like, part of me reacted as though I had done something wrong. I wasn't afraid of having an opinion. I was afraid of what might happen after I expressed it. Anger. Disappointment. Criticism. Rejection. Withdrawal. Conflict. That wasn't really a problem with assertiveness. It was conditioning. I had spent years becoming very good at monitoring other people's reactions. If someone became angry, passive-aggressive, disappointed, critical, or distant, my mind immediately treated their reaction as evidence that I had crossed some invisible line. So I did what came naturally to me. I became strategic. I rehearsed conversations before having them. I calculated possible reactions. I constructed explanations for decisions I hadn't even made yet. I tried to anticipate objections before anyone could raise them. I prepared for judgment before judgment had even arrived. And sometimes I swallowed what I actually thought simply to keep the peace. The irony is that my ability to think strategically—something that can be one of my greatest strengths—became a sophisticated way of avoiding uncertainty. I wasn't always planning how to act. Sometimes I was planning how to avoid exposure. And eventually resentment would appear because underneath all that politeness and preparation, I knew exactly what had happened: I had abandoned myself to manage somebody else's reaction. The Shift What changed wasn't that everyone around me suddenly became reasonable. They didn't. What changed was the meaning I gave to their reactions. I started recognising something deceptively simple: Other people's reactions are information, not verdicts. People respond according to their history, expectations, fears, insecurities, values, mood, available information, and perception of reality. Their reaction may contain something useful.