There is a special kind of exhaustion that lives in the bones of Gen Z, the kind that comes from waking up every morning and feeling like you are already behind on a race you did not remember signing up for. You open Instagram and someone your age has launched a start up, written a book, founded a charity, cured loneliness, and has perfect skin. Meanwhile, you are just trying to decide whether Chocos counts as dinner. It does. Do not let anyone shame you.
We are the generation raised on two conflicting commandments:
- One, you can be anything.
- Two, but if you are not exceptional, what is the point.
And that is how we ended up here, suspended between the fear of failing spectacularly and the fear of living a life so ordinary it dissolves into the background like a low resolution NPC. We do not just want success, we want significance. We do not just want to achieve, we want to matter. And yet, the pressure is so suffocating that half of us are too scared to even begin.
Because what if we give everything and still are not enough?
What if we try, genuinely try, and the world shrugs?
What if we are average?
So instead, we procrastinate. Not because we are lazy, but because avoiding the attempt feels safer than facing the outcome. We romanticise potential like it is a personality trait. We call it “I work better under pressure”, but really it is “If I start now, I will have no excuse if it is bad.”
This article is not a soft hug, it is a spotlight. Because we cannot heal what we refuse to name. And Gen Z, we are tired of oscillating between burnout and self erasure. Time to unpack the panic, babe.
The Excellence Addict.
There is a kind of overachiever who is not fuelled by passion, but by fear quietly living behind the ribcage. You are the one who collects achievements like oxygen, not because you love the grind, but because slowing down feels dangerous. Your CV is not ambition, it is armour. Every certificate is a shield. Every new role is a lifeline. Rest is not rest, it is a threat.
You were told your whole life that you are capable, gifted, going places. Lovely compliments until they become conditions. Because now, the moment you stop performing, you feel like you are vanishing. Your identity is stitched to productivity so tightly that the idea of doing nothing feels like emotional free fall.
You do not chase goals, you are running from irrelevance. Failure is not the fear, the real terror is being ordinary. The quiet is unbearable because it exposes the possibility that without achievement, you might not know who you are.
Here is the truth you avoid like a personal tax audit. Achievement is not the same as worthiness. Burnout is not a badge of honour. You are allowed to exist without proving anything. But you have spent so long surviving on applause that silence feels like suffocation. The work now is learning to breathe without being celebrated for it.
The Paralysed Dreamer.
On the opposite end sits the person who looks effortless, but is secretly terrified of trying. Your ideas are brilliant, your ambition is loud inside your head, but your actions are frozen. You are not lazy, you are scared that effort will confirm your worst fear, that you are not as exceptional as everyone believes.
As long as you do not begin, you can cling to the fantasy that you could have been extraordinary. Potential becomes bubble wrap. Safe. Untouched. Untested. You say things like “I will start when I am ready”, but readiness is not coming. It is just perfectionism cosplaying as procrastination.
You avoid starting because starting means being seen, and being seen means being evaluated. So you self sabotage politely. Small goals, minimal effort, the kind of progress that keeps you invisible enough to avoid judgement but close enough to greatness to keep dreaming.
Here is the secret nobody taught you. Confidence is not the entrance ticket, it is the side effect. You do not wait for courage, you build it mid air. Ugly beginnings count. Failed attempts count. The only thing that does not count is never finding out who you could have been because you were too scared to ruin the fantasy.
The Visibility Addict.
There is a version of Gen Z panic that is not afraid of failing, but of disappearing. You refresh messages for reassurance, not information. Silence feels like rejection. You do not crave success as much as you crave witnesses. If nobody knows it happened, it feels like it did not.
Your worth has become entangled with visibility. The online world trained your nervous system to believe that attention equals safety. You post milestones before you process them. You feel uneasy when life is quiet, because quiet feels dangerously close to being forgettable. You would rather be seen for something you do not even care about than unseen doing something meaningful.
The truth you do not want to hear is this. An audience is not the same as belonging. Being impressive is not the same as being loved. Popularity does not protect you from loneliness. Even the most visible people are sometimes screaming into a room full of applause with no one actually listening.
You do not need to be witnessed to be real. You are not disappearing when nobody is watching. Sometimes the most important parts of your life unfold in secret, and that is not failure, that is privacy. You are allowed to live without announcing it. You are allowed to be known deeply by a few instead of shallowly by many.
The Parentally Haunted Overachiever.
There is a unique flavour of pressure that comes from growing up in an Indian household, where success is not a celebration, it is the default setting. You do not chase excellence, you inherit it like family property. Failure is not an outcome, it is a scandal. You are raised on phrases like “do your best”, which secretly meant “anything less is disappointment”.
You are taught that stability is safety and passion is a risk that responsible people do not take. So you pick degrees that sound employable, careers that sound respectable, dreams that sound realistic. You are allowed to be everything, as long as it fits inside brackets that already existed before you were born.
You are not afraid of failing, you are afraid of becoming the cautionary tale whispered at weddings. You are terrified that one wrong choice will stain the family name you did not even choose. So you chase achievement, not because it fulfils you, but because it is the only language of love you have ever been fluent in.
Here is what nobody tells you growing up. You are not disloyal for wanting a life that feels like your own. You are not ungrateful for wanting joy instead of just security. You are not selfish for refusing to shrink into expectations that were designed for the world as it used to be, not the world as it is now.
You were never meant to be a legacy project. You were meant to be a person.
The Quiet Achiever in Denial.
You are the kind of person who succeeds without announcing it. You perform well without spectacle. You learn quickly without making noise about it. But instead of pride, you feel fear. Because if you admit you are capable, suddenly people will expect more. Suddenly you will expect more. And that is terrifying.
You pretend you are shocked every time something goes well, even though you worked for it. You minimise your wins because celebrating them feels dangerous. If people believe you are good at something, then failure becomes visible. So you hide behind fake modesty. You act surprised. You act confused. You pretend it was luck, even when it was effort.
Your fear is not failure. Your fear is responsibility. If you are talented, then you have to do something with it. If you are capable, then there are no excuses left. So it feels safer to stay small, even when smallness hurts.
Here is the truth you do not want to face. Shrinking does not protect you. It only delays growth. You are allowed to take up space without apologising. You are allowed to admit you are good at things without becoming arrogant. You are allowed to want more without feeling greedy. Humility is not the same as hiding. You can be quiet and still be powerful.
The Serial Rebooter.
You look exciting from the outside. New goals. New hobbies. New identity every six months. You treat your life like a playlist, constantly refreshing before anyone can reach the chorus. People think you are spontaneous and fearless, but the truth is softer. You do not stay long enough to risk failing.
You start before the ending can expose you. Every time things get difficult, you reinvent. New plan. New direction. New purpose. Beginning feels intoxicating because it is clean and full of unmeasured possibility. Nothing has gone wrong yet. Nothing can be judged yet. The future is perfect as long as it stays hypothetical.
You tell yourself you are evolving, but sometimes you are just running. Reinvention becomes a socially acceptable exit strategy. If you leave before things unravel, you can pretend you were never attached.
But here is the truth tucked into the quiet. Not everything needs restarting. Not every discomfort is a sign to leave. Sometimes the next version of you is not a new beginning. Sometimes it is staying. Sometimes growth looks like boredom. Sometimes progress looks like patience instead of fireworks.
You do not need a new life. You need to let one take root.
The Underachieving Overthinker.
You are brilliant in theory but paralysed in practice. Your mind works like a strategy board. You analyse every angle. You anticipate every outcome. You understand yourself too well to move freely. You want a lot, but you expect too much from yourself before you begin, so you never begin at all.
You tell yourself you do not care, but the truth is violent. You care so much that action feels dangerous. Because if you try and fail, the illusion disappears. So you keep your life in planning mode. You research. You prepare. You wait for clarity. But clarity does not come before action. It comes after.
You think your way out of opportunities. You assume disaster before possibility. You talk yourself into smallness because staying still feels safer than trying and confirming that reality might not match the potential in your head.
Here is the softness you need to hear. You cannot think your way into a different life. Overanalysis is not protection. It is paralysis with good vocabulary. You deserve more than the life you have talked yourself into. You are allowed to try badly. You are allowed to change direction without calling it failure. You are allowed to move without knowing the ending.
The fear of racing with no finish line.
Our generation entered adulthood at the exact moment the world turned into a competitive Hunger Games with LinkedIn profiles. You are told to gain experience before you are even given a chance to get experience. Internships expect proficiency. Entry level jobs expect three years of magic. Everyone is hustling like their life depends on it because sometimes it does.
The fear is not just failing, it is becoming unemployable. Falling behind. Never catching up. Watching everyone around you sprint while you are still tying your shoes. The rat race is not metaphorical anymore, it is economic survival. You are not chasing dreams, you are chasing rent.
And somehow, even when you achieve something, the goalpost shifts. Got the internship, now get the PPO. Got the job, now get the promotion. Got the promotion, now aim higher. There is no arrival. Just endless upgrades. You live life like a software update, and still feel outdated.
Here is the quiet truth. You are not failing because you are tired. You are tired because the system is designed to make you feel like you are always one step behind. You are not late. The world is simply running at a pace no human was built for.
The middle-ground nobody talks about.
Here is the part that feels illegal to admit out loud. Most people are average. Not in a sad way, in a statistically normal way. And average does not mean meaningless. Some of the most beautiful lives are quiet. Small. Unseen by the internet. Not every story needs to be cinematic to be worth living.
You do not need to change the world to justify existing in it. You do not need legacy to deserve love. You do not need to be extraordinary to matter. There is value in being kind, being steady, being present. There is value in living a life that does not trend.
The problem is that no one prepares you for a life that is not spectacular. We only hear the extremes, the genius and the failure, the prodigy and the disaster. But the middle is where most of us will live and that is not settling, that is being human. The goal was never to become unforgettable. The goal was to feel at peace inside your own skin.
You are allowed to be ordinary and still be worthy. You are allowed to be unremarkable in public and exceptional in private. Not every life has to be impressive. Some lives just have to be lived.
Here is the truth without sugar and without cruelty. We are a generation raised on possibility but strangled by pressure. We are terrified of failing and equally terrified of being forgettable. We are exhausted from trying to matter and ashamed when we cannot keep up.
But listen closely. You do not need to earn your right to exist. You do not need to become extraordinary to deserve air. Your worth does not begin where achievement starts and it does not end where ambition stops. You are allowed to live a life that is soft instead of spectacular. You are allowed to choose peace over performance. You are allowed to be a person, not a headline.
You are not running out of time. You are not falling behind. You are not disappearing just because you are quiet. You are allowed to be here, even when you are not impressive.
You are enough because you are alive. Not because you are achieving.
And if this felt a little too close to home… good. It means you’re still human under all the performance pressure. It means your heart hasn’t calcified into a LinkedIn badge. It means you’re allowed to breathe, to pause, to exist without sprinting.
For more truths that sting and soothe in equal measure, more words that hold your hand while dragging your delusions, and more unfiltered slices of Gen Z reality; stay with Her Campus at MUJ.
This is Niamat Dhillon at HCMUJ, reminding you gently-but-firmly that you don’t need to be extraordinary to be worthy, darling. You just need to be here.