Personal Development: Being a High Achiever or an Over Achiever

High Achiever or Overachiever - Where to Draw the Line as Small Business Owner Or Solo Professional

Striving for excellence in your business or practice can provide great benefits for your customers and clients and a great deal of personal and professional satisfaction as well as financial compensation for you as the business owner. But when does high achievement cross the line into overachievement and unhealthy habits? As a psychotherapist and as a coach to small business owners and self-employed professionals, I have seen the following unhealthy signs:

1. Allowing Your Work to Define You - Your professional role has become your primary identity. Your work is just one facet of your identity, as are your other roles in life such as spouse or parent. Humans are made up of their being, doing and having. Making work the primary, over-arching identity does not allow you to fully develop who you are as a person beyond what it is that you do and what you have acquired as a result of your work.

2. Creating a Lifestyle That Requires You to Work at an Unhealthy Pace -You can unwittingly create a trap of acquiring symbols of your success and then have to keep working at an unhealthy pace in order to pay for them. Having these symbols is important - they are outward manifestations of your hard work, commitment and success. You deserve them but not at the expense of your well-being.

3. Ignoring Your Health and Well-Being - One of the first things to go when you cross the line from high achievement into overachievement is self-care. Sleep hygiene is the first aspect of self-care to be effected. Next is letting go of a regular exercise routine. Eating can become irregular or there can be overeating or improper nutrition as food preparation time is sacrificed to do more work. The overuse of caffeinated beverages can also occur. Recreation and down-time is becomes rare or non-existent. You feel stressed and burned out more often than not.

4. Thinking You Have to Be the Best and Being Perfectionistic - Healthy competition is a good thing. It fuels your creativity. But a hyper-focus on being the best can lead to severe stress on the body. Perfectionism can cause you to set unrealistic expectations for yourself and others. When you cannot meet these expectations or others cannot meet them, disappointment and frustration can grow and you find yourself becoming increasingly critical and judgmental.

Cutting Back from Work Makes You Feel Bored, Restless and Unfulfilled - This is a strong sign that you have crossed the line into overachievement. You should love your business or practice...your vision for it should make you glad to get up in the morning and reluctant to leave it to go to bed at night. But you should look forward to being away from it and to the wealth of wonderful, healthy distractions life has to offer. Being away from your business allows you to renew and replenish yourself. If being away from it makes you feel bored, restless or unfulfilled, it's time to talk with a coach to restore some balance in your life.
Neglecting Your Relationships - When your spouse continuously expresses wanting more time with you or even worse, expresses feeling distant from you, you have crossed the line. The same is true for your relationship with your children. If you find you are not seeing friends or do not even have time to return their calls, you have crossed the line.
Losing Sight of Your Vision, Dream or Desire - You are in business or practice to make money. But why you do what you do to make this money comes out of your vision or strong desire. If you find you can no longer connect with this vision or desire, you have crossed the line and need to find a way back. The way back comes through giving yourself a break from the intensity of your work and allowing yourself to reconnect with all life has to offer. Doing so will restore your vision, refuel your energy, restore your perspective and set you back on the path of high achievement rather than overachievement.

The demands of being a small business owner or self-employed professional can lead to stress and burnout. Having a coach who helps you create and maintain balance in your personal and professional life can be an important asset to your success. Kate Sanner has been a psychotherapist with children and adult women for nearly twenty years and is the CEO and founder of Vivacity. Now as a coach and consultant, Kate helps a woman on the verge of doing great things to take the leap into the life she has been dreaming of...whether it's starting a business, writing a book or fulfilling a life long ambition. Once a woman has made the jump, Kate then provides tools and resources so that a woman can continue to take herself to new levels and to maximize and monetize all her efforts for continuous growth, financial gain and success.

She is also a podcaster, internet radio show host, Ezine publisher and creator of Vivacity's "The Think and Play BIG System"™, a 10 Step, 46-page guide,- a $57 value - that shows you how to bring your vision for your enterprise into reality and onto new levels. To get a FREE copy of the system, go to http://VivacityNow.com and fill in your first name and primary email address in the box in the upper right hand corner, then click on Yes, Send My System Now.

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