As a successful entrepreneur, you could be considered to fall into a psychological group known as “overachievers” – this group of people tend to be highly effective and successful individuals that have high standards for themselves and even bigger dreams. In a very positive sense, they are dreamers and visionaries – proactively working to turn their dream into reality.
There’s nothing bad about being an “overachiever”, but sometimes, it’s worth taking a few moments to consider where this insatiable hunger for success and significance comes from… as often, today, we live in such a success focused world that we think we NEED to be successful in order to feel “enough”. Another way to put it is that we sometimes feel we need to achieve a lot in order to be worthy of receiving love and respect from other people.
Indeed, society is plagued with a feeling of not being good enough – from teenage girls piling on make-up to cover their spots to teenage boys getting hung up on the size of their appendages; we are, by our very nature, insecure… and there’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, it’s this insecurity that pushes us to achieve and create – this insecurity is what often drives us to be the best that we can be, as in many ways, perhaps we wouldn’t push ourselves quite so hard if we didn’t have this nagging sense of not being “enough”.
However, as with most things, there’s a range and a healthy balance within that range.
A good entrepreneur doesn’t want to have so much self-belief they become conceited and arrogant; indeed, arrogance doesn’t tend to come from a place of self-belief, it tends to come from a place of insecurity and showmanship – a protective mask put up in order to compensate and hide their lack of internal confidence and deep-rooted self-belief.
The challenge, whilst this sense of not being “enough” and therefore wanting to expand and achieve can be a fantastic driving force, is that if people are lacking in this area of self-esteem, self-worth and self-love… whatever they achieve in the external world is unlikely to fulfill them and give them the internal feelings they crave.
Whether you’ve made millions by building an online empire selling komatsu parts or have a phenomenal blog with a huge social media following – there are only so many boxes this can tick in terms of you having the feelings you want to feel in your life… which is why it’s so important to ensure you have the foundation of self-love and self-worth that comes from within you as opposed to being depending on something you have or are wanting to achieve.
Louise Hay, one of the world’s leading experts in the area of self-love and self-esteem describes self-love as:
“To me, love is a deep appreciation. When I talk about loving ourselves, I mean having a deep appreciation for who we are. We accept all the different parts of ourselves—our little peculiarities, the embarrassments, the things we may not do so well, and all the wonderful qualities, too.”
The key point is that our feeling of self-worth and self-confidence should ideally come from a place of self-acceptance and liking ourselves for who we are… not for what we achieve… or by being propped up by the status symbols around us.
It’s great to have ambition and achieve your entrepreneurial dreams; it’s just worth taking a few moments to reflect on your driving force and to ensure you have a good supply of self-worth, because this is the fuel that will drive you toward happiness, just like how cash is the fuel that will drive you toward business success… in both cases, without it, you’re going to be spluttering along eventually broken down on the side of the road.
