Your best friend is working at the Animal Clinic, your roommate is killing it with a 4.0, your next-door neighbor comes back every day after a long, hard workout. Everyone else’s accomplishments can make you feel like an actual potato. Your babysitting job, 3.8 GPA, and weekly workout routine start to seem like nothing. You feel like you’re accomplishing absolutely nothing. Does that sound about right?
If so, join the club. Being at a school like the University of Michigan where the students are smart, athletic, and ambitious seems intimidating to most, but to an overachiever it can seem a nightmare. It feels like you’re constantly behind, even if you’re not! It’s easy to get distracted by the amazing things people are doing around you. Not to mention, you feel super burned out and exhausted, and everyone else looks like they’re floating through life with 8+ hours of sleep.
Overachievers arguably know the feeling of underachieving best. It’s not underachieving by any other standards, but by their own impossible ones. I can speak to this… in fact, overachieving yet feeling like an underachiever just about sums up most of my internal disappointment. Feeling this way – like you achieved hardly anything – is exhausting. It makes you tear yourself apart, just trying to be better.
We spend money on coffee, only to feel guilty about wasting hard earned money on a beverage. We feel unhealthy if we skip a workout. We feel inefficient if we don’t finish studying every single topic. We feel lonely if we skip a social event to recharge or rest. We feel uneasy if we don’t spend every second planning and maximizing our days.
However, overachievers ultimately lose if they don’t turn around and reflect on what they have accomplished rather than what they haven’t. Believe me, only unhappiness comes from comparison, jealously, and overstressing.
In fact, you did not waste money on that cup coffee, you treated yourself, and that’s okay in moderation. You are not unhealthy if you don’t have time for a work out; rather, you may even be healthier if you’re using that hour to catch up on sleep anyways. You aren’t necessarily inefficient if you don’t finish every single item on that looooooong to-do list – you have tomorrow, and you will figure it out. You shouldn’t feel guilty about taking time for yourself, and you definitely shouldn’t feel like you haven’t achieved anything.
We often set our goals one level up than humanly possible, only to be disappointed in ourselves when we don’t reach them. We tear apart our confidence, strength, and minds in an attempt to feel what we deserve for “not accomplishing” anything. But it’s just not the truth. We’re too hard on ourselves. Although it’s important to keep yourself motivated, take it easy and be kind to yourself. Stay strong, stay happy, and stay proud of yourselves, collegiates. You’ve come a long way, and you’ve got so much happiness ahead of you.
Images courtesy of: Pinterest and University of Michigan