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Do You Fall Into The Classic Achiever Trap, Of Not Feeling You’ve Done “Enough”?

November 12, 2022 Tips Insights Career Lifestyle
Do You Fall Into The Classic Achiever Trap, Of Not Feeling You’ve Done “Enough”?

Have you ever caught yourself doubting your own level of achievement? Have you asked yourself, what qualifies me to be where I am?

Do you dismiss praise given to you?

You may have the PA profile called ‘The Achiever’.

Also known as the Sun-Saturn in the Psychological Astrology framework, Achievers are often addicted to hard work. They also pride themselves on quality work, being ever focused on doing good by their customers, clients or boss. In fact, they have such a strong work ethic and sense of self-discipline, they out-work almost everyone around them.

Yet, they rarely acknowledge the full value of all this work.

Why is that an Achiever is unable to recognize their own achievements?

One reason is that they often set benchmarks for themselves that aren’t realistic.

A classic achiever has a long list of achievements, awards, certifications, qualifications and more… But, to themselves, it’s never enough.

A student once told me, “I was asked to go on stage at a business conference to speak about my business…but I didn’t feel qualified to speak to that room of other business owners.”

The question I asked is, “Why don’t you feel qualified?”

She has the Achiever PA profile. As such, I suspected the reason behind what she said was not about her actual lack of qualifications. It’s about how she viewed her own achievements. She replied that she thought she hadn’t done enough yet to be worthy of talking to that room of business owners.

So I asked, “when do you think you would qualify?”

She answered, “maybe when I’ve grown my business more and it’s in the Top 10 locally.”

However, if you ask an Achiever the same question later, even after they have hit that Top 10, they would reply again that they weren’t qualified yet!

They would set themselves up for an even larger milestone. It would evolve to, “when I am in the Top 3 locally.” And along that same trajectory, they would say, “when I get an award or when my business is recognized internationally, not just locally.” 

So it becomes an ever-shifting goal post that’s impossible to score.

Achievers keep raising the benchmark for recognizing their own achievement as being “enough.” They are continually unsatisfied with their own level of work, even after they have already met previous goals.

If you ask an Achiever who they see as having real achievements in life, they’ll state over-achievers like Jack Ma and billionaires like Jeff Bezos as being people who they see as actually worthy of recognition. In their own minds, their own achievements do not match the definition of achievement.

As a negative effect, Achievers set unrealistically high standards for themselves and put a lot of pressure on themselves.

Does this sound more and more like I’m describing you?
Despite doing well for yourself in life, do you also downplay your success?
Do you continue to aspire toward something far above where you are?
Have you wished you were better at acknowledging your own achievements?
Or do you crave finally reaching that feeling of having done “enough”?


If you should find the Achiever profile in your chart, you may experience themes of oversensitivity when it comes to personal performance and feelings of adequacy. This feeling gets especially triggered when required to define the measurement of success. 

In fact, you often end up working extremely hard as a means to overcompensate for these internal feelings of inadequacy

When you locate how this profile plays out specifically in your life, you’re able to then shift your psychological perspective and learn to manage your own expectations – especially in moments when you find yourself putting yourself under that additional pressure to keep overperforming.

Psychologically, the Achiever’s lack of self-acknowledged success often has a connection to past authority figures in their lives.

Usually while growing up, Achievers had an authority figure, or parents, who had set really high standards and expectations.

You may have never felt you could meet these high requirements. In some cases, you might have gotten compared to someone else, such as a sibling. Maybe your parents praised your sibling for getting 99 out of 100. But when you only got 97, you didn’t receive the same level of praise.

The way this can translate into your adult life is that your mind gets set that only the top tier achievement would be deserving of recognition. Only when you’ve reached the absolute top would you have felt that you had achieved “enough.”

The effect of having this profile is the potential for developing feelings of disappointment and emptiness despite a lifetime of hard work.

Achievers often devote themselves to a single lifetime career trajectory in an attempt to culminate a grand masterpiece or a legacy. That goal can be incredibly expensive in terms of time, money and effort. 

If you don’t learn to recognise your achievements along the way, you risk feeling that you haven’t achieved anything.

Yet, Achievers are called that because they do achieve a great deal…

If you are an Achiever, you ARE worthy of the recognition. 

Very few of the other PA profiles share your level of commitment to work hard and to producing real results. Because of the high level of quality work that you do, it definitely deserves the respect and admiration from the people around and working with you.

Not everyone has the tenacity and dedication required to commit long term to their goals like building a business or becoming subject-matter experts in their fields. 

So what can you do if you fall into this Achiever classic trap of not feeling good enough?

The first step is a mindset shift that allows you to start accepting more recognition into your life

It will be in your nature to constantly aim for the next goal and then the goal after, so the smart thing to do is to recognise each step of the milestones and to reward yourself for the hard work that you have put in along the way.

It is important to pursue something which is determined as a worthy cause to you.You have to be able to see each step of progress as part of how you are making a difference and how your efforts are making a contribution to others.

As we’re all individuals and complex personalities, the Achiever profile might not be the only profile at work in your unique chart though…

Each PA profile has many layers and diving deep into each nuance helps you understand how they show up in the context of your life and career.

The course is the perfect place to learn more about your own unique mix of PA profiles. Identifying how it impacts your life negatively, while also recognising your strengths, enables you to actually tap into it as a professional asset.

To find out more about the course, click on the button below

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