Lately, I've been thinking.
When I present this phrase to a friend or family member it is usually met with one those long nasal inhales as they gently shake their head up and down with their eyebrows slightly raised (knowing that they may need to clear their schedule for the next hour or so). However, since I'm now presenting this phrase here, online, it won't matter to me whether you share their reaction or not.
In all honesty, it really does not matter to me whether I get that reaction in person because either way, whether I have someone actively listening or not, I'm about to start making my own mental connections as I vocalize my recent thought process.
This is why I write and this is why I prefer conversations with a small number of people as opposed to being in a large group where I generally get mistaken for being shy or quiet which is anything but the case.
Quiet? Maybe, because I have a mind that moves faster than my mouth can speak.
Shy? Not so much.
Nonetheless, lately, I've been thinking about what kind of subject I would want to hear or read about this week if I were browsing the web, scrolling on social media or speaking with friends.
I've been thinking that I want to revisit a topic that I wrote about roughly a year and a half ago: Carrying Expectations of Others.
In one of the first articles I ever wrote on here, I mentioned that after taking the Strengths Quest assessment, my top strength result out of 30+ qualities was "achiever."
Since writing that article, a lot of life has happened in between which is why I felt compelled to revisit it and reevaluate my understanding of the topic.
A year and a half ago I wrote that: " 'Achieving' is what yields an immense sense of self-sufficiency but on the other side, also yields a yearning to aim for a target only you can see. The issue with this is, if only you can see the target, how can you ever expect someone else to hit it?
Where I once expected others to hit my target, I now understand that it often is the target that needs to be adjusted, not the other players.
To put it plainly, being an achiever often means that we project onto others the expectations we are both willing and ready to meet ourselves. As a consequence of having these expectations, a burden is born and shouldered upon the sobering realization that our expectations cannot be achieved because, just like the unseen target, they cannot even be seen."
I spoke about this in regards to our expectations of others, however, the last year and a half have made me think about my inner-achiever in respect to my expectations of myself and not as much with others. As far as the concept of having an unseeable "target" goes, well, that was a tough realization as well because I've come to know that I often can't even see the target I'm trying to hit myself, much less the target I used to expect others to hit.
It's interesting to me how when we become more aware or work through one challenging part of our life, the energy that was previously being put into that challenging area simply spills out of that space and into another one because, after all, the first law of thermodynamics tells us that energy can't be created or destroyed but it does transfer.
As I said, I'm not so sure that I even see my own target anymore, or maybe I never did, to begin with. I think that for me, achievement has more to do with a feeling that with the physical boundary or target that is achieved.
Essentially, I strive for the feeling of achievement more than I do the actual achievement itself.
Maybe this is because it is the feeling of achievement that gives me that adrenaline rush that adrenaline-junkies are always after. Someone who enjoys BASE jumping doesn't base jump for the feeling and result of landing safely on the next base, they do it because they love the feeling of taking off and soaring between the bases.
Same goes for an achiever like me, we get the rush from the experience that (hopefully still) results in the actual achievement.
I believe this is because whether we experience good stress (such as the feeling of excitement while on a rollercoaster) or bad stress (fear-related), your stress response has still been triggered either way. If we perceive something as stressful (regardless if it's good stress or bad stress) our brains have a specific hormone-release response.
So, maybe for you, achieving is about the actual achievement itself, or maybe after reading this, you'll tell one of your friends or family members that "you've been thinking" too and you've arrived at some new conclusions.
