How to Be a Chill, Happy Overachiever

No, it’s not an oxymoron

Jun 21, 2024

If you’re a high achiever with perfectionistic tendencies, a desire to do things really, really well, and a habit of getting kind of stressed out when things aren’t measuring up your A+++ standard of work…

…you’ve probably had people tell you, “You need to let go and care less.”

But I don’t think you need to do that.

Let me share with you something the fantastic marketing coach Simone Seol said recently:

The idea is to keep trying different shit until we hit something that works.
That doesn’t sound glamorous. It sounds too basic to be the right approach. But it is.
People aren’t biting? Keep trying different ways to say it. Don’t stop until you get a yes. There is NO fancy business “hack” that allows you to bypass the discomfort of trying a ton of things that don’t work.
This process isn’t great for the ego, but it’s GREAT for strengthening unconditional self-love.

Let that sink in for in for a minute.

The only way to get everything you want is to keep trying different shit until you figure out what works.

And that process of trying and adjusting, and trying and adjusting, until you figure it out doesn’t have to be a painful, stressful, self-critical slog.

You can take that process and make it the arena in which you build unconditional self-love.

Whether your big dream is to launch a business, land your next job, nail the project you’re in charge of, impress everyone at that big meeting — or just stay on top of the ten million things on your to-do list.

No matter your goal or desire, chances are, it’ll take more than one try to figure it out.

I don’t want you to lower your standards, be less ambitious, or care less.

I want you to learn how to love yourself no matter what’s going on with the current thing you’re trying to accomplish.

To be able to look failure squarely in the eye with curiosity and playfulness – without making it a shameful indictment of YOU as a person.

And to feel comfortable and secure when things are going really well. (This can be a challenge too!)

Because if you can love yourself unconditionally even when a failure is happening…

If you can look at a bad result and say, “I’m good at this. I know what I’m doing. This is not a Me Problem. This is just a Process Problem”…

You can analyze what happened with a cool head and calmly decide what to do differently.

And if you can feel comfortable and safe when everything is going smoothly…

(This can be harder than it sounds! “Fixing what’s wrong” feels safe and familiar to me.

“Everything’s going well” makes me nervous, like I barely, precariously got what I wanted and I’m definitely going to lose it.)

But if you can learn to feel safe and secure when things are going well, you’ll stop anxiously waiting for the other shoe to drop and stop finding “things to fix” where there aren’t any.

So how do you do this?

How do you take the achievement arena that you’re already in and use it to strengthen your unconditional self-love rather than strengthening your unconditional self-criticism?

We need to change your automatic mental programming.

And don’t worry. It’s really straightforward.

Let me show you through an example.

Let’s say a client comes to me and says: I’m so stressed at work. I’m going to burn out if I keep going this way. I need to reduce my work stress.

The first thing we do is find a specific example of the problem.

I might say: Okay! Tell me about a recent time you got stressed at work.
And they might say: Well, we kicked off a new project a few weeks ago. I was reviewing some materials for it with my boss. My boss asked me questions about certain numbers in some analysis, and I couldn’t answer the questions. That really stressed me out.

Now that we have a specific example, we can use it to understand the automatic programming running in your brain that is causing you stress.

This is the absolute crux of coaching.

Because it’s not the situation that’s stressing you out. Your boss’s question didn’t stress you out. You not knowing the answer in that moment didn’t stress you out.

Those are just circumstances, aka facts out in the world. They can be interpreted in a stressful way, or in a non-stressful way.

What happened is that your brain automatically interpreted the situation in a way that caused you stress.

So I might ask: So your boss asked you a question and you didn’t know the answer. That’s the circumstance — the facts of the situation. What did you think about those facts that made you feel stressed?
And they might say: Well, I’m supposed to know. It’s my job to have all the answers. So if I don’t have the answer, I’m doing a bad job, and that’s very stressful.

Perfect. Now we know the underlying logic that is causing your stress.

And once we know what the logic is — what the automatic mental programming is — we can play with it, and we can change it.

So I might say: That’s interesting. Is that your job — to know everything and have all the answers?
Because if you believe that assumption, it’s totally understandable that this question from your boss would be stressful. But what if that assumption isn’t true?
And they might say: Huh. Well, I thought it was my job to know everything. Maybe it’s not? What else would my job be though?

And we can have a whole discussion about this.

What IS your job? What ARE the standards for success? What does good and bad look like?

Your automatic brain has assumed certain answers to those questions already…but maybe, when you think about it, you don’t actually agree with those answers!

Working together, we can come up with new logic — a new bit of programming — that clicks in and resonates with your brain, helps you feel better, and do better work.

I might say: Let me make a thought suggestion. Just something for you to try on — it’s not right or wrong.
What if your job isn’t to have all the answers but rather to be really good at figuring things out?
So you don’t have to know everything off the bat. You just have to be be good at identifying what’s important to go learn next and go learn it quickly.
And if that resonates with my client, they might say: Oh! Well if I thought of it that way, then me not knowing the answer to that question isn’t that stressful.
It’s just like, “Oh, why is she asking me that? Is there something I need to know here, or is it just a random question that’s not important?” Okay, that feels much better.

Bam! Programming rewritten. Stress reduced.

Because the reality is that you are not “a self-critical person” or “a people pleaser” or “a perfectionist.”

None of those things are fixed, permanent traits of who you are as a human being.

All that’s happening is that you have little bits of logic running in your brain that are stressing you out. Certain assumptions. Certain definitions. Certain rules about how the world works and what you’re supposed to do and what’s necessary for success.

If we boiled it all down, it’s probably <20 pieces of logic in your brain that are causing all your stress.

Imagine if you had an incredibly sophisticated and complex piece of software that kept overheating and crashing every few days.

What if I told you: Hey! All this overheating and crashing is being caused by <20 bugs. You want to go in and fix them?

That sophisticated piece of software? That’s your brain.

Finding and fixing the bugs? That’s coaching.

And when you squash the “mental bugs” that are stressing you out today…

And when you learn the skill of finding and fixing those bugs forever into the future…

You can become a chilled out overachiever.

You can enjoy the “ongoing test and learn” process that’s required to do anything well.

You can use your quest for achievement to strengthen your unconditional self-love rather than to beat yourself up.

And you can create the life you actually want.

That’s what you get from coaching.

And that’s what you’ll get from me AND learn how to do for yourself in my course & coaching program.

Join the program waitlist today

What my clients have to say…

“I was worried it would just be a patch on things. As soon as I’m not talking to Pooja and working through some of these things, does it all go back to square one?

But as we worked together, if we didn’t have a session for one week, it was evident that I didn’t immediately go to zero. The tools and training Pooja gives people stick.”

—Client | VP - Global Product, Visa

Less Stress, More Flow with Pooja V.

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