Last week I performed stand-up comedy with IC Stand-Up (psst—come to our shows), and it went well. I got some pretty decent laughs, I think my point of view came across and I ended up walking off the stage feeling good. In fact, I felt downright proud. If you’ve read any book ever, you can already guess how things are about to go for me. I went back to my room, 10 o’clock at night, with the intention of starting my homework due the next day. I opened a word document to type up my three-page essay. The blank white page greeted me, and I thought, “Well, it’d be downright emotionally jarring to go from a good night of stand-up to homework. I should listen to some music to cool down.” So I threw on David Bowie, who I thought would be fun. 15 minutes later, I was bopping around to the Rolling Stones. Three hours later, The Ramones were keeping me exuberant and far away from my homework (not to mention pretty freaking sweaty after so much dancing). By this point, is was 1 o’clock. After another hour of watching Key & Peele videos and an hour after that of “doing research” by scouring TvTropes, I was finally ready to buckle down…and go to sleep.

Feeling proud kept me from doing the work I needed to do. The confidence boost I felt from doing well in my chosen challenging hobby briefly cut off my emotional need to do well in school. My example might not fit for you, but most people can have this problem. Despite what you might expect, success can pave the way for failure if you focus too much on your own success. People usually drive themselves to succeed because of some emotional need to improve their perceptions of themselves. If this need goes away, temporarily or permanently, they, like me, let themselves slack.

This isn’t the only way success can mess with you. My friend and I like to play the ancient Chinese and Japanese board game Go. You know, the one Google’s robot just beat a human in, signaling the forthcoming end of humanity. Well, when we play against each other, he might as well be that robot to me. He blocks my every move four turns before I’ve thought to make it. He destroys my pieces faster than I destroy the box of Nutter Butters we eat while playing. We started learning the game at the same time, yet he beat me the first twelve times we played. But the thirteenth time was my moment of glory. Every game we played, I learned a little more about his style. More importantly, every game we played, my friend grew a little more complacent. And on the 13th game, the unlucky game (for him), I finally managed to win.

I didn’t win because I became the better player. I won because he was content, and I wasn’t. I needed to push myself to do better. I saw a need for innovation, and innovation is usually a necessary part of success. He felt he could continue on his set path. He grew stagnant while I evolved, if only barely, and only for about one game before he learned his lesson and crushed me again. Hey, so it goes.

So let me leave you with what I hope are inspiring words: you should dislike yourself. Don't hate yourself, you're a lovely person, especially if you've read this far in my article, and hating yourself ends up counter-productive. But an appropriate amount of discontentment keeps you passionate, drives you forward, makes you work to better yourself. There's a danger in doing too well and feeling too good.