When Success Feels Like Failure – And How to Fix It

In this episode, we’re diving into a hard truth that so many high achievers face but rarely talk about—shame-based achievement. Why do we chase success and still feel empty when we get it? Why does the high from accomplishment fade so quickly, leaving us feeling even more inadequate? The truth is that many high achievers are driven not by passion, but by fear—fear of being unworthy, fear of failure, fear of rejection.

Today, we are breaking down the cycle of shame-based achievement and how it creates burnout, emotional numbness, and the constant feeling of "not enough." 

More importantly, I’m sharing how you can break free from it. You’ll learn how to stop defining your self-worth by your achievements, start building intrinsic motivation, and redefine success in a way that feels authentic and sustainable.

If you’ve ever felt like you’re only as good as your last win—or that you have to keep achieving just to feel safe—this episode is for you.

What You'll Learn in This Episode:

• Why so many high achievers are driven by shame and fear rather than passion
• The cycle of shame-based achievement—and why success never feels like enough
• How trauma and perfectionism wire us for overachievement and burnout
• How to redefine success in a way that feels authentic and sustainable
• Why self-compassion and emotional safety are the keys to true motivation

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction
03:45 How perfectionism and shame create unhealthy success patterns
06:10 The Hidden Cost of Shame-Based Achievement – Why success feels hollow and unfulfilling
10:59 Success as a Survival Strategy – How trauma and childhood experiences wire us for overachievement
14:50 The Shame-Achievement Loop – Why we keep chasing the next goal and still feel empty
20:31 How to Stop the Cycle – Practical steps to shift from external validation to intrinsic motivation
24:53 Redefining Success – What a meaningful and sustainable life actually looks like
32:30 Building Self-Compassion – How to quiet the inner critic and create emotional safety
37:40 Creating New Rhythms – Why rest and recovery are essential for high performance
43:49 Letting Go of the Old Story - Why success will never heal you—and what will

I am grateful you are here,
Jerry

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Transcript

Jerry Henderson: 0:00

What are you trying to build? What are you trying to achieve? What are you running from and running towards, and is it even what you want? And if it isn't, then give yourself the permission to start designing your life the way that you want it to be, the way that you truly imagine that you want your life to be. You don't have to build somebody else's life. For many of us, that's what we're doing. We're building somebody else's life based off of expectations, based off of shame that we got handed to us or perfectionism that got wired into us. We're actually building somebody else's story, somebody else's life, and if it's not resonating with you, please give yourself the permission to redefine what resonating with you. Please give yourself the permission to redefine what success is for you. What does a life that you actually want to live look like? And then give yourself the permission, take the brave, courageous step to give yourself the permission to build that life.

Jerry Henderson: 1:03

Hello everybody and welcome to this episode of the Permission to Love podcast. I'm your host, jerry Henderson, and, as always, I am so grateful that you're here Now, if you're new to this podcast. This is a podcast about how to have a healthier, thriving relationship with yourself, and here's the thing most people don't even realize that they have a relationship with themselves, but you do, and that relationship is determining everything that's happening in your life. So this podcast is dedicated to helping you understand how you can heal that relationship, how you can build resilience, how you can heal the trauma, how you can overcome shame and how you can give yourself the permission to love yourself. Because when you do that, everything in your life begins to change your relationships change, what you believe you're worthy of changes and what begins to manifest in your life changes. So welcome. I'm so glad that you're here Now. The other thing I want to do is introduce myself to you Now. If you've been listening to this podcast, consider this a little bit of a reintroduction, but if you're new, I'm a coach, I'm an author, I'm a speaker, I'm a podcaster, and I do all of this work because I want to help people understand how they can transform their relationship with themselves.

Jerry Henderson: 2:19

I work with people to take them on a journey of self-expansion, self-transformation, so that they can create the life that they actually want to live. You don't have to live in shame. You don't have to walk this planet feeling like there's something wrong with you, that you're uniquely broken. You don't have to continue to feel like an imposter. You don't have to continue to kill yourself by trying to achieve your way out of the way that you feel about yourself. You can have a life that's rooted and grounded in self-acceptance, self-compassion, while, at the same time, building a life that's beautiful, having beautiful relationships in your life. That's all possible, and you can do it from an energy that's life-giving instead of life-sucking. So if you're interested in learning a bit more about me and the work that I do, you can go to my website at jerryhendersonorg. Now, with all of that in mind, let's jump into today's episode, and what we're going to be talking about is how shame can drive this need in us to achieve, and we get into what is called shame-based achievements, and the reality is, when we do that, it is going to destroy our happiness and it is going to cause us to be on a never-ending treadmill of trying to chase success in order to feel good about ourselves, and we're going to talk about all that. We're also going to talk about how you can break free from that, and we're going to talk about all that. We're also going to talk about how you can break free from that Now.

Jerry Henderson: 3:45

I am very aware that many of the listeners of this podcast have trauma histories, have histories of trying to overcome, a narrative of the way that they feel about themselves. I'm also aware that many of the listeners of this podcast because I coach many of you are high achievers. You want to bring your best to everything that you do. You're doing fantastic things. You're at the highest levels of achievement in your careers, whether that's academia and government service or in business. You're also at the high levels of achievement as a parent, as a spouse, I mean. You really want to bring your best to this world and that's part of the reason why you listen to this podcast so that you can learn how to be the best version of yourself, to heal, to allow yourself, to accept yourself and to bring your success and your achievements into this world from a place that's healthy, from a place, once again, that's life-giving.

Jerry Henderson: 4:39

I also know and one who's experienced this how our shame, our story of shame, our story of trauma, our story of feeling like an imposter, can get really wrapped up into our achievements, and it can drive the reason why we're so successful, the reason why we're such high performers, the reason why, when people think about giving something to somebody. They think about us Because of the old saying if you want to get something done, give it to the busiest person. And while there's a lot of truth in that, the challenge is that can burn us out, that can keep us in a state of fight or flight, of stress, of always trying to prove our worth. And so today I want to talk about how we can begin to move away from shame as a motivation for achievement, trying to overcome that story and to move towards a place where our achievements are rooted not in trying to prove our worth, but as an expression of who we are and coming from a place of self-love, self-acceptance and self-compassion. And what we're talking about here is something that runs deep, cuts deep for many of us, but almost no one wants to talk about it. And it's those shame-based achievements, or our achievements being rooted and motivated from a place of shame, of trying to overcome that nagging feeling that we need to prove ourselves, that we're never enough, no matter what we do. And here's the truth.

Jerry Henderson: 6:10

A lot of high achievers have this story running underneath the surface. How do I know? It was the story that drove my life for 40 plus years. It's the story that often shows up when I'm coaching people who are doing fantastic, incredible things but have that underlying, nagging feeling that they need to prove themselves, that they don't matter unless they have a certain amount of success or a certain amount of performance in their life. And you might be listening to this podcast today and you have that narrative. You have stories like if I succeed, I'll finally feel like I'm enough. If I keep performing at a high level, people will see my worth, they'll accept me and then, subconsciously, that'll give you the permission to accept yourself.

Jerry Henderson: 6:55

You might also have the story or the feeling that if you stop succeeding, if you stop driving yourself, you're going to lose momentum, you're going to lose everything and you start to catastrophize what happens if you don't keep pushing yourself and you're operating out of a place of fight or flight energy because it doesn't feel safe to you to not keep succeeding, to not keep pushing yourself. As a matter of fact, you don't know who you would be without that in your life. And here's the truth about all those stories and I've said this before and I acknowledge it that it works for a while right, it motivates us, it gives us energy, it causes us to strive and to perform at levels that many other people don't do, and we carry a sense of pride and honor about our capacity for work, our ability to get things done, the attaboys or the attagirls that we get as a result of those things. But here's the other side of it. That's so true that success only gives a temporary sense of relief from that growing feeling of inadequacy. Because to drive for success in these cases that I'm talking about isn't about passion or purpose. It's about trying to outrun our shame. It's trying to outrun that feeling that there's something wrong with me. I've got to prove myself. So in this episode, we're going to dig into the truth about shame-based achievement, why it happens and where it starts, the hidden costs, such as burnout, workaholism, emotional numbness and relationship issues, and, most importantly, we're going to talk about how to build a healthier relationship with success and our achievements. So does it sound like a good episode? I sure hope so, and if it does, you're in the right place, because if you've ever felt like you're only as good as your last success, or if you've ever wondered why you feel so empty when you win, even when you get everything that you want, you get all those achievements, but they feel hollow. If all of that describes you, this episode absolutely is for you. So let's get into it Now. Let's start with a hard truth A lot of high achievers are not simply driven by passion.

Jerry Henderson: 9:12

Now, while that might be an initial motivator for many high achievers, they're often driven by fear and it becomes the primary driver for them, and it's often operating at a subconscious level, and it's masked with passion. It's masked with this urgency and this energy, but in reality, it is often an underlying fear the stories that we've already talked about a little bit that's driving that need for achievement. And what is that fear rooted in? Well, it's often rooted in shame. So, as a quick review, what is shame? Well, dr Brene Brown defines shame as an intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.

Jerry Henderson: 10:06

Now, as I've shared before, shame is very different from guilt. Shame says I am bad, there's something wrong with me, and we have other episodes that we've done that talk about why that decision gets made, about why I am bad, and you can go back and listen to those, but for now, I just want to lay that foundation that shame says I'm bad and that feeling that I am bad will cause me to try to prove to myself and to others that I'm not bad, which can then drive the need to achieve, to succeed and to do things that we feel like are almost superhuman, in order for us to get rid of that aching feeling about the way that we feel about ourselves. Now here's something else that's important to understand about shame. It isn't just an emotion. It becomes your belief, your identity.

Jerry Henderson: 10:59

Shame tricks you into thinking that you are it, and here's where things get really sticky and tricky, when you grow up feeling like your worth is tied to your performance because of, maybe, your family, of origin, story or what you experienced in life. Success isn't just about success anymore. Success becomes a survival strategy. I want to say that again. Success becomes a survival strategy in order for you to feel safe, because it wasn't safe for you to be you, it wasn't safe for you to not perform, to not do the things that pleased other people, and so perfectionism gets baked into our nervous system, and success then becomes, very much so, a survival strategy. So if you feel like you backing off of your performance or you backing off of your achievements isn't safe and it grinds against you and you've just told yourself the story that well, that's because I'm this high achieving person and I'm wired that way. I want to invite you to ask yourself a question has it possibly become more for you than that story that you're telling yourself, justifying why you're burning yourself out, burning through relationships, not taking care of yourself, carrying all of that chronic stress? Is it more than that narrative that you have to justify all of that? Has it actually become a survival strategy for you? As you sit with that question?

Jerry Henderson: 12:31

For just a little bit, I want to start talking about the self-worth theory of motivation. Dr Martin Covington came up with the self-worth theory. That explains that many people equate their ability with their self-worth. And when we equate our self-worth to our ability, our achievements, our performances, we then carry this story and it begins to play out like this If I succeed, I'm valuable, if I fail, I'm worthless. So what happens? You work harder, not because you love it always, right, we don't always love this treadmill that we find ourselves on, but we don't know how to get off of it. And so we're not doing it because we love it, or even necessarily that we love the work.

Jerry Henderson: 13:18

Now I do want to acknowledge that we can absolutely love the work that we're in Now. I love the work that I did in philanthropy for 17 years, that I raised over $1 billion with the BUS dollars while doing that. So there was a lot of love for it. But what happened was the drive to prove myself eclipsed even the love I had for the work, for the organization and for what I was doing, because it wasn't the love or the work that burned me out, it was the way that I engaged in the work that burned me out. It was the need to overcome the story and the way that I felt about myself that burned me out.

Jerry Henderson: 13:57

So when we confuse the story and say, well, I'm doing this because I love it and I'm so passionate about it, that can be true. Doing this because I love it and I'm so passionate about it, that can be true. But when it crosses the line to burning ourselves out workaholism, never able to disengage, never present with the people that we love, because we're thinking about that next thing that we could be doing, should be doing, etc. That has crossed the line into something that's about identity and worth versus love and passion for what we're doing, because what actually begins to happen and I want to invite you to reflect on this is we begin to transition into a place where we begin to get terrified of what failure would actually mean about us. If I fail, it actually means something about me versus the task, the job, the role. Does that make sense for you? Does that resonate for you?

Jerry Henderson: 14:50

Because for many high achievers, this is the pattern that they live, and this pattern actually started at a very early age. And it might have started because your parents only praised you when you succeeded. Maybe you were punished or criticized harshly when you failed. Or maybe you learned that love and acceptance were conditional, based on only how well you performed. Or maybe you're trying to overcome the messages that other people told you about yourself whether that was a parent, a teacher, a coach or a caregiver of any form that really made you feel like that you were worthless, that you were nothing, that there was something wrong with you. And now you're on this subconscious treadmill to outrun that and outperform that. Or maybe you have a story of childhood trauma and the safest decision for you to make was that there was something wrong with you in that scenario, versus that your caregiver was incapable of caring for you, or maybe you were in a really toxic relationship that wired you towards performing and pleasing in order to stay safe.

Jerry Henderson: 15:54

Whatever the case is, this stuff gets wired in our system and when love and acceptance and safety are tied to achievement, success becomes not about growth anymore, but about protection. Let me say it again it's not about growth anymore, but it's about protection. You're not chasing success. You're trying to avoid rejection, pain, isolation and all of the things that come with that. Can you just take a moment and center into the possibility that it's really not about your achievements, it's not about your success. It is about avoiding rejection, feeling safe, allowing yourself to belong and to be loved. And when you understand that, it can begin to change your relationship with your need for achievement. It can change your relationship with why you feel so driven to succeed and why you feel like such a failure when you don't, or you have the fear of what it means about you.

Jerry Henderson: 17:06

When you fail, or the slightest mistake that you make, you beat yourself up for days, weeks, if not years, about it. See, that all sounds like survival mode, doesn't it? When you hear it that way, because it is survival mode, and when you understand that that's what's driving a lot of this stuff. It can allow you to observe it, it can allow you to let go of judgment around it and it can begin to move you to a place where you can start to have the tools to change those core motivators and get motivated from a place that's actually about you creating the life that you want to live.

Jerry Henderson: 17:41

Because here's what I find for many high achievers they wind up often creating a life that they don to live. Because here's what I find for many high achievers they wind up often creating a life that they don't even want. They wake up and they say to themselves how did I get here? This isn't the life that I imagined or I wanted, or I built all the things that I thought I was going to build. I did all the things that I said I was going to do, but it all just feels meaningless and hollow and I don't feel good about me. I don't like me. And they're into self-loathing and their self-confidence begins to erode. Because here's what's happening they're putting on achievements and success, something that it was never designed to give them. You can never get from success or achievements or from others' accolades what you're really after. What you're really after is about your own love, your own sense of belonging, your own sense of connection with yourself, based off of who you are, not off of what you do.

Jerry Henderson: 18:44

I'm going to talk about something here that you're probably already really familiar with, but I want to give you words to it, and it's this shame achievement loop. And here's how it works. Right, you succeed, you feel a temporary high, you get the dopamine, you feel good, and that temporary high that we get from that isn't a bad thing. But what happens is when we start to live for that high and we start to believe that if we don't have that, that there's something wrong with us, and we begin to get a dependency on that to take away the way that we feel about ourselves, to quiet the noise about who we think we really are. So what happens is you succeed, you feel that temporary high, but then what happens is that high fades. Right, we get the hedonic adaptation that's talked about when we deal with dopamine and reward systems. Our brains and our bodies begin to adapt to it, and it means less and less to us, and then what happens is that shame begins to creep back in as that high fades.

Jerry Henderson: 19:43

The research is really clear and interesting on this that when we get something the job, the house, the achievement it will lift us. The research shows it'll lift us for about six months at the most. And what happens is we begin to get back to our overall set point, our waterline of how we feel about ourselves. And that's why it's so confusing for people, because they get the thing and they think, oh, this is the thing, this will be the one that'll get me to feel different, that'll allow me to have peace, to make me feel like I've arrived. And so they get it and it's lasting and they think it's going to sustain, but it goes back down to what their overall set point is about six months later. And then the shame settles in. And then guess who's there? You are, and this is an area that I refer to a lot about.

Jerry Henderson: 20:31

My story is that when achievement stopped working, when it was no longer bringing me what I needed or wanted and I couldn't figure out how to get it anywhere else, I then started drinking and my drinking the story originally was. It was about taking the edge off, allowing myself to calm down, allowing myself to unwind a little bit and then to allow myself to loosen up socially right. I thought it brought out that best part of me that I liked and I thought other people liked. And then what happened is it began to turn into something where I originally thought was going to take the edge off. Allow me to relax, allow me to be more social. It then turned into me trying to escape the feeling that I was hoping that achievements was going to take away, that if I could achieve enough, that I'd feel okay. And then it didn't work. And because it didn't work, I started using alcohol to try to meet that need, and then that led into more and more shame until eventually I drank just to be able to tolerate my own presence, to take away the ache.

Jerry Henderson: 21:33

And then we all know where that story goes right it leads to addiction, it leads to separation in our relationships, and so if you're on that path, I want to let you know there is hope. You can change, and it's going to start by changing your relationship with yourself, getting healthy about who you believe, that you are letting go of the narratives that you've been carrying for decades, that have been driving you to an early grave, driving you to burnout. It's going to cost you career. It's going to cost you relationship. It's going to cost you health. It is going to cost you the image that you're working so hard to try to protect because it's unsustainable.

Jerry Henderson: 22:13

I know you're probably thinking you're the one person who's different, that you have this extra level of superpower inside of you, that you can do all of this. You're a human being with a finite amount of energy willpower. No matter what biohacks, no matter what performance tricks you put in place, you still live in this body that has limitations. You still have this mind that can only work so hard. You have emotions that have breaking points. Okay, take care of yourself, learn to love yourself and, if you need help with that, go to my website, sign up for a free discovery call, a strategy call, where we can meet and figure out how you can start to get on a journey that's healthy for you. You don't have to wait until your life implodes. Shame doesn't have to control your story or your journey anymore. And, yes, the truth is you're probably going to need some help with that because you've got ingrained beliefs and habits and patterns that seem so real to you. But the reality is they're not real. They're stories. Okay, and our lives are driven by our stories. And that's good news, because you can change your story. You truly can.

Jerry Henderson: 23:33

So let me get back to this cycle here, and I'm so glad that I was able just to express here for a moment what was genuinely in my heart around this topic. But as we close out, what this cycle looks like it really is about once again, you succeed, you get the high, the high fade, you come back to your set point, the shame creeps back in. And so then what happens? You raise the bar, you chase the next goal. You think, well, that helped me some, but it didn't quite do it. So maybe this next thing will do it. And you're never ending on this thing, right? Satisfaction never arises, it always is just out of reach.

Jerry Henderson: 24:10

And then, yes, you probably do meet that next goal, make that next achievement, but at what cost? And you start to watch yourself wither away and you start to wonder how long you can keep this up and you're feeling like everything's falling apart inside of you and you're wondering how long until it falls apart around you. And then you start to imagine yourself escaping your life. You start to get into fantasies of what life would look like if you just escaped and got away from all of it and you just left everything behind. Now, that might not be your true desire to escape it all, but because the pressure is so overwhelming, it feels like the only option.

Jerry Henderson: 24:53

Because for you to admit that you can't carry it, admit that you can't keep it up, feels like failure. Asking for help feels like failure. And so what do you do? You just keep repeating it. You go back to the top. Achieve, get the high. It wears off. You feel the shame. Raise the bar, meet the achievement, show yourself and others that you can do anything. Then it wears off again. Then you feel shame and you're wondering why can't I just feel normal? Why can't any of this allow me to feel okay? Why can't I get the permission to relax, to be at ease, to be present, to feel safe? And it's become a cycle of survival, as I said earlier, of survival, as I said earlier.

Jerry Henderson: 25:38

And it's actually a cycle of survival around not being seen, of not being seen because we're hiding behind the role, behind the achievements. I'm the surgeon, I'm the doctor, I'm the professor, I'm the executive, I'm the CEO, I'm the athlete, I'm the performer, I'm super mom, I'm super dad, I'm super student. Whatever it is that you're saying that's me and you're trying to point everybody to that, while the whole time internally you feel like a fraud. Internally you're just waiting for people to find out that that isn't you. And then that story that we'll talk about in another episode around imposter syndrome we're going to get really detailed around it. But that story then drives the fact that you gotta keep up with the character that you built and it's exhausting and you don't want anybody to see the flaws or the cracks, Because if there's a crack, they might see into who you are and who you are.

Jerry Henderson: 26:37

What you feel about who you are is based in shame. You feel like you're not enough, there's something wrong with you and the last thing you ever want anybody to see or to know is that that's who you believe that you are. I'll just touch real briefly because you know I love to do this about some of the research on how this fight or flight happens with us. Paul Gilbert, who developed compassion-focused therapy, explains that shame activates the brain's threat system, the same system as we talk about. That's involved in life or death situations.

Jerry Henderson: 27:15

When you're in that cycle, your amygdala is lighting up, cortisol and adrenaline are flooding through your system. Your brain does go into fight or flight, and this is why, for many high achievers, they often carry a sense of restlessness and anxiousness. They can never relax. You sit down for five minutes, try to watch something. You feel like you should be doing something else. Right, does that narrative sound familiar to you? You can't relax, relaxation feels like wasted time and there's a guilt that begins to come with it. And so every few minutes, you're getting up and thinking, well, I need to do this or I need to do that.

Jerry Henderson: 27:51

Or you're actually just sitting there ruminating on what you should or shouldn't be doing and everybody's feeling like you're not present, you're not enjoying things, you don't have time to be with your kids, you don't have time to have intimacy, you don't have time to really take care of your needs mentally and emotionally, and your nervous system is literally stuck in survival mode. Does this feel real to you? I hope it does. I hope you're feeling this in your system as I'm talking about it, because if you stay in this path, it does not end well. I know personally, and this is why I do the coaching that I do. This is why I do the work that I do, giving people the permission to love and accept themselves as they are before the consequences get worse and worse. And here's what I'm hoping you're seeing and understanding All of this stuff that we're talking about, the shame-based motivation, how it affects the brain and all the things that start to happen in the nervous system.

Jerry Henderson: 28:48

This is why you keep running and this is why it feels like you can't stop. Here's the truth. You can stop Now. I'm not talking about stopping achievements. You can stop Now. I'm not talking about stopping achievements. I'm not talking about stopping success. Okay, those are good things, and just because you have a negative relationship with them right now doesn't mean that those things are bad. It's the way that we do them in.

Jerry Henderson: 29:12

And see, this is one of the big fears of people who are high performers or high achievers. They get into either or thinking all or nothing. I either have to go full out or, if I don't go full out, that means I'm quitting, I'm stopping, and then I'm not going to have success and everything's going to fall apart. No, you can achieve. You can have success at even higher levels that you're having right now, and it starts with understanding the fallacy in our thinking around that and then allowing ourselves to redefine success and then putting things in place that allow us to still perform, still achieve, still have success, but in a way that's motivated from safety. So now let's dig in a little bit deeper on some of the costs of living this way, of living in a way that's not sustainable. I've talked about it and mentioned some of these things earlier, but I want to dig into them just a little bit more.

Jerry Henderson: 30:06

Number one, the obvious one burnout. And burnout is real. It's about your mind, your emotions, your body, even your spirituality, where you just feel like nothing feels life-giving, nothing feels good. I describe it often as life went from color TV to black and white TV. So living this way, trying to sustain this kind of life with those kinds of motivations, is gonna lead to burnout, and one of the things I work with with my clients is understanding how to change those motivations. Let go of some of those stories, because I'll always tell people burnout isn't about how much you're doing, it's about the way that you're doing it, the energy that you're doing it in right, because we're expending a lot of mental and emotional energy with our fears, beating ourselves up, shaming ourselves. All of that is energy that's sucking the life out of us and it's taking away any energy that we could put towards actually meeting the goals that we have in our life, doing the things that we really want to do. So that's why I said earlier that you can have even more success in your life as you heal this area, because you're going to have more energy and it's going to be a whole different set of energy, trust me and the research supports all of this.

Jerry Henderson: 31:21

Okay, dr Christina Maslach's research on burnout shows that it's caused by chronic stress and emotional exhaustion. Can you feel me on that? Are you in that place or have you been at that place? Are you headed to that place? Listen, you have to remember that as a high achiever, you're often pushing yourself as we've been talking about through this whole episode beyond your limits and over time, your body and your mind will start to break down. There's been extensive research on this. People don't get to escape this.

Jerry Henderson: 31:55

Okay, if you do that, if you stay in the pattern, you're going to find yourself burned out and you're going to find yourself in this trap where you feel exhausted but you can't stop working. You feel numb, you can't figure out why, you feel disconnected from your intimate relationships and your social relationships. But you have to get that project done right. You got to meet that deadline, you got to do that thing, and so you're sacrificing all of the things that are important to you. You're actually sacrificing everything that you hope these achievements are going to allow you to have.

Jerry Henderson: 32:30

We have a story that, when I get to a certain place, I can relax, I can give my family what they want, what they need. I can then be free to be more socially engaged and enjoy the beautiful things of life. But guess what? That achiever, who's coming from a place that's unhealthy, is never going to give you the permission to do that. Sit with that for a second.

Jerry Henderson: 32:53

The version of you that's right here right now, driving you with the stories that someday I'll be able to relax, someday I'll be able to enjoy and I'm doing it for these people that I love and I care about and all of that stuff right, that person, that narrative, is going to be there at your next achievement. It's going to be there telling you okay, this one was good, but we still have to do this next one. You're not going to be any different at your next achievement than you were at your last one. Why? Because you haven't done the work internally to begin to change the stories and the beliefs that you carry. And so now is the time to start changing the beliefs, dealing with the fear that you have that if you stop, if you give up, things are going to go bad. The shoe's going to drop. You see, that story is just going to keep living with you because it's a story that's based in your identity and your worthiness, not in the story that you're trying to get to a certain place so that you can give yourself permission to back off. That's the person that needs the healing, that's the story that needs the healing, and the achievements are never going to give you that. Success is never going to heal you. Achievements are never going to give you permission to relax. Do you really think that all of a sudden, you're going to achieve something? It's going to. Then, at that moment, that achievement is going to say to you hey, we arrived, we're OK, you can relax. No, you know who does that. You do that and you're the only one who has the power to do it, and the work starts today. Make today day one of your transformation, to give yourself the permission to enjoy all of the things that you've been working so hard to allow yourself and others to have.

Jerry Henderson: 34:49

Now, the other challenges that we start to face when we live like this is the workaholism right and the self-handicapping. So we are really familiar with workaholism right and what that means, but you might not be familiar with self-handicapping, and it is a psychological strategy where you create obstacles for yourself. So if you fail, you have an excuse. Because we're so afraid of failure that we'll actually subconsciously build strategies so that we have a story to share or to say about why we fail. And self-handicapping shows up in things like procrastination. You just keep pushing it off so that you can then tell yourself I didn't have enough time. Or you overcommit, and so you just tell yourself and others that I just had too much on my plate, I couldn't possibly get it all done, and you kind of wear that as a badge. Or you're setting impossible goals, right? You're setting so many of them that you can't possibly get all of those things done.

Jerry Henderson: 35:46

And that's one of the things I work with people early on in coaching is taking a look at their goals and then beginning to try to right-size them and then focusing in on just a few. And as you focus in on those few and you learn the patterns and the behaviors and the skills that's required to meet those in a sustainable way. You can then translate those to other things. But for many high achievers the goal list is long and the measure of what it means to meet that goal, to do it perfectly, is often outlandish, ridiculous. And we do that subconsciously in order to give ourselves a story and an out that we can go to when we fail, and the research on self-handicapping theory or the reason that people do it shows it is a defense mechanism, as we've been talking about, and it's a defense mechanism to protect your sense of worth, because if you fail, you can blame the circumstances instead of yourself.

Jerry Henderson: 36:39

Now the other challenges that show up that I'll touch on briefly we've mentioned some of them already in this episode are relationship issues. Right, because shame-driven achievers struggle with connection and intimacy. If you believe your worth is tied to your performance, it's hard to let someone see you when you're weak or you're vulnerable, so you wind up hiding yourself, you wind up hiding your doubts and your fears and you don't have a safe place to ask for help when you're struggling, because you believe that you have to keep at that level and any sign of weakness or vulnerability doesn't feel safe. Now the other thing that can happen for many achievers in their relationships is that you can become the fixer or the provider in relationships, but you're never the one who needs help, or you're rarely the one who needs help, because it doesn't feel safe to feel like that. You need help, and one of the key things in a relationship working is equality in that relationship.

Jerry Henderson: 37:40

Help, and one of the key things in a relationship working is equality in that relationship. Right that one person doesn't feel like they're always the needy one or the one who always needs the help, or they feel like they're the one who's always depending on the other person. That relationship dynamic is not going to work out well, and so for the achiever, one of the things that's going to be important for their relationship to work is to express their need for help and to receive it, because many high achievers know how to give, but you don't know how to receive. It feels unsafe to receive because you think you should be able to do it all on your own, and if you can't do it all on your own, that means there's something wrong with you. But there's probably something much deeper, at work or at play in this, this fear to be vulnerable, this fear to ask for help, because asking for help, being dependent on somebody else at one point in your life wasn't safe, and so you knew that you had to show up for yourself. Back then you had to figure it out for you. You had to know how to do it all, solve the problems, because you didn't have a caregiver who was able to do that for you. And so now that hyper independence is causing your relationships to suffer, it's causing you to lack connection and presence that you so deeply want, because it just doesn't feel safe to be dependent on somebody else. And a part of your healing we're going to talk about this in a little bit it's going to be about learning to feel vulnerable in relationships.

Jerry Henderson: 39:18

Now, the other consequence I'll talk about in this type of living is that emotional numbness that eventually shows up. Right. Shame-based achievements cut you off from yourself. We know it cuts us off from other people, but I want you to know it also cuts you off from yourself. You start to feel detached from who you are. Success stops feeling good. It feels empty. You don't even know why you're doing it anymore. Joy becomes foreign and you start to fake it. You're trying to find happiness, but you can't find it because you become disconnected from who you are, because that identity in the achiever is taking over everything.

Jerry Henderson: 39:59

That person that you have to be, that flawless, perfect, get-it-done type of person, is always out there in front and you're hidden right behind it. You wish you could get rid of that facade, that exterior, but you can't because it's not safe and so you're separated from yourself, you don't connect with yourself, you don't have time to connect with yourself and, most importantly, you're afraid what happens if you do connect with yourself, because you've been really working hard to build a story and a narrative that keeps you disconnected from yourself. You're this right You're the doctor, the lawyer, the achiever, the whatever, the super person, like I said earlier, super mom, super dad, super student, whatever the super is right. That you're trying to be that's who you're trying to build your identity as, and to risk taking the time to not be that and connect with your authentic self reminds you of who you think you are, reminds you of the way that you feel about yourself, the whole thing that you're trying to escape, and so no wonder you feel disconnected from your authentic self, no wonder. You feel like maybe you're living somebody else's life and you've lost the sense of your authentic self. And, on top of that, you're not experiencing peace because your nervous system is in fight or flight, so you can't relax, so you feel disconnected, you're constantly churning and burning and you can't figure out how to find your way back home to yourself because you're rejecting yourself, and a part of shame-based achievement is the attempt to reject yourself, is the attempt to disconnect yourself from yourself, and healing once again is going to be about learning to love and accept yourself and connect to yourself and to stop hiding from yourself. Can I just say that again, I want to encourage you to think about what would happen if you stopped hiding from you, if you weren't buried underneath all of your achievements, if you allowed yourself to see yourself. And I know you might be afraid to see who you are or to face the way that you feel about yourself or what you believe about yourself, but it's going to be key. It's going to be key to face that part of you that you have been working so hard to avoid and learn how to sit with it, love it and integrate that as a part of who you are. Because I want to tell you, that part that you're rejecting and trying to get rid of is a beautiful part of who you are. It's simply carrying a burden of pain and it's developed unhealthy coping mechanisms to try to heal that pain. And one of the unhealthy coping mechanisms is the high achiever, the workaholism and all of that character that we build. But I want to just say it again the part of you that you're avoiding, the part of you you're trying to bury, that you don't want to sit with, is beautiful. It's a beautiful part of you that you're avoiding. The part of you you're trying to bury, that you don't want to sit with, is beautiful. It's a beautiful part of you and it has so much to offer you.

Jerry Henderson: 43:07

So with that, let's talk about how to heal, how to change and how to create the life you actually want to live. So how do you break free from all of this? The first thing start building self-compassion. Dr Paul Gilbert, who I mentioned earlier, in his research on compassion-focused therapy, shows that cultivating self-compassion helps calm the threat system and activate the soothing system. Threat system and activate the soothing system takes us out of fight or flight, starts to activate the parasympathetic nervous system. That rest, the permission to rest and to relax.

Jerry Henderson: 43:49

So, if shame-based achievements is trying to overcome the way that you feel about yourself, self-compassion is about loving yourself and accepting yourself as you are and extending compassion to the beautiful person that you are right now, in this moment, who's worthy of acceptance without all of the achievements. That doesn't need the achievements in order for you to be kind to yourself, for you to love yourself and this might be bouncing off your nervous system right now, you might be thinking there's no way I can do this. I know how that feels. I know the story that I carried, that I was the only one who wasn't gonna be able to change that I was different. But that's that whole message of shame. That's what shame is, and so, as a part of moving towards self-compassion and out of shame, I wanna invite you start noticing your self-talk.

Jerry Henderson: 44:40

How do you speak to yourself? Do you speak to yourself the way you'd speak to somebody that you love? Probably not. Are you driving yourself with relentless criticism, finding all the flaws, finding everything that you did wrong instead of what you did right? Can you take time to identify that story that you have and then begin to shift it towards a more compassionate story. And if you can't see or even think, then begin to shift it towards a more compassionate story. And if you can't see or even think about how to be compassionate towards yourself or talk to yourself in a way that's compassionate, think about a dear friend, or think about your children, if you have them, or somebody who's really dear in your life, and begin to write out how you would speak to them.

Jerry Henderson: 45:17

And now I know there's going to be stories that come out as to why you can't speak to yourself that way, that it's different. It's not different. Okay, it's only different. Because you tell yourself that you're different. You might say, well, no, I know me, I know my story, I know all the things that I've done. Listen, I know me, I know all my stories, I know all that I've done. But I that I've done, but I have still learned to give myself compassion. Because I realized that statement of I know me, I know all my stories, I know what I've done, I'm different is shame, and that's the thing that we're going to overcome, and one of the ways we overcome it is with compassion towards ourselves.

Jerry Henderson: 45:52

This is one of the big challenges for high achievers is to show ourselves compassion because we believe that that is weakness. It's not weakness, it is strength to face yourself, to give yourself the same compassion that you don't feel like you deserve and begin to see that you do deserve it. Okay, and if that word deserve is too strong for you, I get it. Then move towards just simply saying that you're going to give yourself the same compassion that you would give to somebody that you love and you care about. But here's the truth you do deserve it.

Jerry Henderson: 46:25

And the other thing that's going to be important as a practice of self-compassion is to give yourself permission to rest without guilt. Do a little experiment this week, if you're up for it. Take some time and rest. Just be there, see what stories come up. Okay, what do you start to think about? Note it, write it down, get curious about it. Instead of feeling guilt about why you can't rest, get curious about why you can't rest. What's the narrative that starts to come up? What do you tell yourself? That's going to be evidence for you about the pain. That's going to be evidence for you about why you feel like you need to prove yourself. So try that this week. Just take some time and rest, relax, see what stories come up and then meet yourself with words of compassion, kindness, understanding the same that you would give to anybody else who's experiencing those things.

Jerry Henderson: 47:22

Now, another thing that's going to be really important in this process of healing and changing is giving yourself permission to redefine success. And I know that can be scary. I know it can be, but I want you to think about something Success is not about external outcomes. I know that's the way that we think, especially in our culture, but it's really not about that. It's about what we're hoping all of those things are going to give to us, and what are we hoping our achievements are going to give to us. The financial success, relational, all that. It's about internal peace, and the only person that can allow us to have internal peace is ourselves. So can I invite you to do something right now? Can you start the journey of redefining success?

Jerry Henderson: 48:07

Could you maybe imagine that success, as I said, is about internal peace, that success is about showing up authentically, letting go of the character. That success is about joy, satisfaction, connection with other people, allowing ourselves to enjoy what we have, about being able to be present, to have a relaxed nervous system, to be able to accept ourselves. Because, once again, if we take time and we take a moment and we project to think like, what are we hoping all of these achievements are going to give us? And then we anchor ourselves into that right. Really think about what it is you're hoping all of this will give you. Anchor into it, and then begin to give yourself permission to have that now, and then begin to build a life that's focused around that about what true success is.

Jerry Henderson: 49:07

When was the last time you asked yourself what is true success for you? When did you actually create a vision for your life that was based off of what you authentically want, versus what you think you have to do, of what you feel like you need to do? Now I get it. We all need to do certain things in life, but if the majority of our life is based off of things that we don't want to do, that we don't enjoy, that are leading us down a path of burnout, etc, that we're chasing all of it, I don't know if that's a life that we want to continue to live, and I certainly don't think that that's what success is. What is a successful life to you? Have you taken time to define it?

Jerry Henderson: 49:45

If you struggle with it, think about how it would feel. Think about the emotions, the state of being that you would be in if you got the things that you're trying to get, and then begin to build a vision and goals and habits that allow you to get towards that and start doing that today. So, for example, if one of them is that you feel like success is connection in your relationships, how could you begin to have connection If you feel like success is having impact and meaning? How could you start to integrate impact into your life today, meaning into your life? Could you take a moment and be present today and allow yourself to experience a sense of awe and wonder? Because, remember, everything that we're chasing is about trying to get us into a state where we feel that we have the peace, the joy, the acceptance, the connection that we're looking for. And so maybe this week you could do an exercise of understanding.

Jerry Henderson: 50:52

What are you trying to build, what are you trying to achieve, what are you running from and running towards, and is it even what you want? And if it isn't, then give yourself the permission to start designing your life the way that you want it to be, the way that you truly imagine that you want your life to be. You don't have to build somebody else's life. For many of us, that's what we're doing. We're building somebody else's life based off of expectations, based off of shame that we got handed to us or perfectionism that get wired into us. We're actually building somebody else's story, somebody else's life, and if it's not resonating with you, please give yourself the permission to redefine what success is for you. What does a life that you actually want to live look like? And then give yourself the permission, take the brave, courageous step to give yourself the permission to build that life.

Jerry Henderson: 51:54

Now, the third thing that can help you grow and change in this area is to focus on mastery, not performance. What do I mean by that? One of the things that's going to be key is getting out of the performance mechanisms right that are based in shame, to show that I'm not that and let me perform to show that I'm not that. To getting into mastery, because mastery is actually something that you can begin to enjoy, that begins to become a challenge that's life-giving for you, that's not so attached to outcomes but is more connected with the process of external motivation, comes from mastery and autonomy, right. So autonomy, the feeling that we are free to do it in the way that we want to do it, that we are getting to make our choices, that we're not driven by some other story, and that intrinsic motivation is actually what's sustainable, that keeps us from going down the paths of burnout and workaholism and maladaptive or unhealthy coping mechanisms. And that's a powerful thing. To shift to right, to shift towards intrinsic or internal motivations based off of values, based off of our ability to master something, based off of our autonomy, our ability to say that's what I want to do. And when we switch to that that internal motivation versus external validation we then start to get on a path that's sustainable and life-giving. And a couple of ways that we can do that is start to make a shift from winning or achieving to learning right. This is all about moving from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset.

Jerry Henderson: 53:38

This was an area I really had to work on to shift from winning to learning, because for me, it was no longer about getting the skills or doing the thing. It was about getting it done and then moving to the next thing. There was this urgency that I always carried about get that task done, get that goal done, get this accomplishment done, go to the next thing. It was about winning, winning, winning, achieving, achieving, achieving for the sake of winning, and achieving instead of learning, instead of growth, instead of mastery, and I wasn't even giving myself permission to celebrate the achievements or the wins. Let me ask you do you allow yourself to celebrate your wins? Do you allow yourself to anchor yourself in the achievements before going on to the next one? Are you learning and growing? Are you just blowing through everything? Because it's really about the outcome versus who you're becoming.

Jerry Henderson: 54:33

You know, one of the things I like to do in coaching is to help people understand. It's not the achievement that's the most important thing, but it's who you become and the process of your achievements. And if your achievements are based on trying to not be somebody versus trying to grow and learn and to develop yourself into the person that you want to be, you're going to stay in that energy that's going to keep you stuck, move you towards burnout, not allow you to enjoy your life. And so self-determination theory tells us that if we can begin to shift our focus on how am I growing, how am I evolving, how am I expanding, and it becomes about us, not just the thing that we're trying to do we're going to begin to achieve and succeed from a much healthier place. Because, listen, when it's about you and your growth and who you're becoming, you're also going to make sure that you're taking care of yourself. You're also going to be checking in with yourself. You're going to be assessing and addressing the five key areas that I talked about in the last episode of what makes up a healthy relationship with yourself. Okay, so, if you start focusing in on you as the person in the process and mastery and learning and growth, your relationship with achievements and success is going to change and your relationship with yourself is going to change and the way that you do it is going to change. You're going to make sure it's sustainable, not just grinding through to get to the next thing out of a sense of desperation to try to prove yourself.

Jerry Henderson: 56:14

Now, the fourth thing that's going to be important in this healing process is about building secure attachments with people. You know shame thrives in secrecy and empathy is a key part of healing shame. Being vulnerable and being met with empathy and support is going to be a key part of you healing and becoming a healthy and resilient high achiever, and I know this might be one of the more scary areas to dive into, but it's a very necessary area if you truly want to make change. Dr Susan Johnson's work on attachment and attachment theory shows that vulnerability is a key to building connections. And guess what Connection is?

Jerry Henderson: 57:03

Key to thriving, is a key to letting go of that feeling that you're not enough, to healing imposter syndrome, to feeling safe and for you to be able to sustain the achievements that you want in your life, to meet the goals that you have, without burning out Other people are a key part of that. For many high achievers they don't see that and they don't want to see that. Because needing help or becoming vulnerable or dependent on other people is so scary because of the way that we feel about ourselves, because of that shame, we feel like we've got to keep ourselves in hiding All, allowing somebody to see a struggle. Man, that's a tough one. But if you want to heal, if you want to change, let somebody see you struggle. Let somebody not see you as perfect. Ask for help without having to over-explain it or justify it. Just simply say you need some help. How does that feel when I say that? Does that feel scary to you? Allow your intimate partner to help you. Allow a coach or a therapist to help you in your journey, get the help you need.

Jerry Henderson: 58:13

It's going to be key to your healing and your change and sustainability because it's going to start taking the pressure off, because it's going to act as a relief valve. It's going to show you that you're okay, even with all the struggles that you have and you're going to probably be met with yeah, me too, I'm struggling with that and I'm afraid to be vulnerable and I'm afraid to ask for help. We all are in some sense, aren't we? But if you allow yourself to be vulnerable, bring down the wall and receive care and help and support without guilt, without shame, without the story of what it means to you, if you do that, it's going to be key to helping you heal because it's getting to the core right. It's getting to the core of being afraid to be seen. We want everybody to see our achievements. We don't want them to see us. But if we get safe relationships where people can see us and see us apart from our achievements, and we begin to feel accepted in those types of relationships, it'll actually start to heal you. It's even going to release a bunch of feel-good chemicals, right, our oxytocin and all those feel-good chemicals are going to start getting released and allow your nervous system to relax and allow yourself to start moving towards something that feels more like the life that you want to build Now.

Jerry Henderson: 59:37

The other thing that's going to be key and we're going to do a whole episode on this is to create new rhythms, to realize that rest is not weakness. It's necessary for sustained performance. You ask any high-performing elite athlete and you're going to find that they're as intentional about their rest routine as they are about their athletic performance. And why we don't translate that into the world of daily life for high achievers causes me to scratch my head sometimes, and I know we've got some things that are out there, but it's not something that's really embedded with coaching programs for high achievers. Many of the programs are just about driving and grinding yourself more hustle right. That's not going to keep you where you want to be and you're actually going to outperform those individuals in the long term if you make rest intentional.

Jerry Henderson: 1:00:34

Once again, back to the athlete. If they were constantly pushing themselves to peak performance every single day, what's going to happen when competition time comes right If they haven't had any chance to rest and to recover and allow their muscles to rebuild, allow their systems to reset. They're going to have a level of fatigue and exhaustion that's going to cause them to be beat by their competition. No different for you. When we think about performance and achievement mentally, emotionally and business and physically all the things that we're trying to do you're going to have to get intentional about routines that allow you to back off. And if you can't, then that's an invitation to discover the story that's behind why you can't rest, why you can't just be without feeling like you got to keep achieving, keep grinding. So here's an encouragement for you You're going to have to allow yourself downtime, recovery time. Okay, to not constantly have to achieve.

Jerry Henderson: 1:01:32

And here's one of the traps for many high achievers they tell themselves that this period of their life is just a season and when they get through it, then they'll rest, then they'll take a break. But guess what? It never comes right. And when your season has turned into months and years and decades, it isn't a season Newsflash, it's a lifestyle and it's something that is embedded in your nervous system. And one of the things that's going to help get that out of your nervous system is allowing yourself to be intentional about rest. So can you do something? Can you schedule yourself some downtime? Can you allow yourself to engage in something that you just enjoy? It's not performance-based, it's joy-based.

Jerry Henderson: 1:02:18

When was the last time that you did something and it wasn't about performance? You might be saying, for example yeah, I mean, I took up tennis or some other type of activity. Let me ask you something Did you turn it into something that became an achievement that you had to be the best at? That now feels somewhat like a grind instead of an outlet and instead of just being joy and doing it for the sake of doing it. And if you didn't do that, if you didn't turn it into something that's all about achievement that became life-sucking.

Jerry Henderson: 1:02:47

Are you able to experience it without guilt? Are you able to do things in your life that aren't about achievement, that aren't moving you towards something, whatever that thing is? Are you able to do those without guilt? Are you able to do them with peace and joy? If not, I invite you to reflect on that and understand once again what's the stories, what's the motivators? If you do it with some curiosity, I'm sure you'll find out some areas that you're being invited into to begin to heal. That'll move you towards a path of being a healthy, thriving, resilient high achiever.

Jerry Henderson: 1:03:25

I hope that that gives you some encouragement, as you see that there are some strategies that you can engage in, that can start to help you heal, that can help you change, to get you off the achievement treadmill. And once again, when I say get off the achievement treadmill, I'm not talking about that we don't achieve anymore, that we don't do great things with our life, but we no longer feel like we're driven by the achievements, that the achievements are actually driving us, versus us engaging in them as a way of self-expansion, versus being based off of shame and hiding, trying to outrun the way that we feel about ourselves. So let me say it again Achievements are never going to heal you. Shame-based achievements are never going to satisfy you, because they're based from a place of fear and not enoughness, instead of being based in love and a sense of worthiness that's inherent to who you are, because you exist, not because you have to do something to prove it. So can I encourage you that you are enough. Even when you quote, unquote, fail, you are worthy. Even when you're not productive, even when you're not achieving something, you're worthy. You don't need to keep proving yourself. You don't have to prove that you're worthy of love to anybody else, or even to yourself.

Jerry Henderson: 1:04:58

Now, if what I have shared has resonated with you and you want to make some changes and move out of shame-based achievements into a place of self-acceptance, I want to help you on that journey. I'm going to encourage you to see the show notes in this episode, or go to my website at jerryhendersonorg and set up a free strategy call where we can talk and we can connect and we can start getting to the root of some of these challenges that you're facing, so that you can make the changes. Now. Get rid of the story that when X, y and Z happens, you'll start making the changes. Whatever X, y and Z is, it's never going to give you the permission to make the changes that you need to make.

Jerry Henderson: 1:05:43

You're the one who gives yourself that permission, and one of the first steps that you can make towards giving yourself that permission is to set up that call. No obligation, no pressure. Well, just connect and see if working together is the right fit to get you out of that cycle and get you towards something that feels more healthy, life-giving, more connected, more presence, more intimacy, more joy, more peace all the things that you're working so hard for, but you're not actually giving yourself the permission to enjoy, to experience and to savor the permission to enjoy, to experience and to savor. Don't you think it's time for you to allow yourself to start enjoying the life that you have? And don't you think it's time for you to allow yourself to be okay with you, for you to realize there's nothing wrong with you, there's nothing that you need to outrun, that you can sit in a place of self-acceptance? If that's you, I encourage you once again. Set up that free call, and I'm looking forward to connecting with you.

Jerry Henderson: 1:06:48

Now, if you've not yet had a chance to subscribe to or to follow this podcast, I want to encourage you to take a moment to do that, because that's going to keep you updated on when new episodes come out, and I don't want you to miss a single episode. Now, if you're finding this episode and others helpful, I would encourage you to share it with somebody, because if it's making a difference in your life, it'll make a difference in their life as well. Well, thank you for joining another episode of the Permission to Love podcast, and I want to remind you, as I always do, that you are worthy of your own love and you're worthy of your own love. Regardless of your achievements, regardless of your success, you can give yourself the permission to love yourself.