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[quote=Anonymous]Try taking a break from seeing everything positive in your life as an "accomplishment," "achievement," or success.

It's great to have such a sense of agency in the world - the feeling that your efforts are the reason for the good things in your life. It's probably what helps you take "failure" in stride - you believe so strongly in yourself that you know you'll be able to absorb it or bounce back better.  This is a wonderful trait!!

But nouns like "achievement," "accomplishment," or "success" all have a way of framing positive life moments as the result of effort and work. And those are things you say you do automatically and dutifully.

So the positive results you keep getting have come to seem inevitiable to you - probably for a long time, if not your whole life. Each positive accomplishment just frees you up to shift your focus to getting to the next one. 
 When you've learned to view things as routine and predictable, they become the opposite of special or even pleasurable.

You say that you've long been viewed by others and yourself as an "overachiever"  So it makes sense that you've been conditioned to see your life as a series of goals, tasks, adn achievements. Again, while this is good in so many ways, if taken too far, it will flatten out the highs and lows of your life and turn pretty much anything into feeling like work.

My advice: Try something new this coming week. Pause at the top of every hour, if possible, to notice how you're FEELING in that moment. Literally, pause to check in with yourself - how do I feel right now? For the first week, just notice what feelings come up. Don't try to shift them, but do ask yourself to scan for any feelings of joy or pleasure in that moment.  (They're often there but go unnoticed when we're so busy moving through each moment to "get things done.")

If at the end of the week you find you're still coming up empty on joy, try turning it into a bit more of a "treasure hunt" the second week. Same hourly check-in, but this time if no joy comes up, take an extra moment to FIND something that makes you happy right then and there.  It can be something TINY. The small things are every bit as important as the big things.

Because the very PROCESS of living (of being) can be extremely pleasurable if only we stop to notice. And so much of it is completely separate from the outcomes and "achievements" of our days. Life has a way of presenting moments of joy ALL THE TIME. We just need to look for and notice them, and not put such heavy expectations on the less frequent big moments.

Circle back after a few weeks of this and let us know what you notice. I'd be happy then to share some of my own "joy" observations then, too.  For me, these things happen pretty regularly - sometimes because I've been "productive" and gotten something done well that's important to me. But more often than not, it's because of something much smaller that has nothing to with my accomplishments. It's just something that is happening with or without me - but when I notice and appreciate all those those small things, they add up to a very pleasurable, bouyant experience of life!! Again, it's all there waiting for us to notice!

(And by the way, yes, I've always been viewed as an overachiever at every stage, both by myself and others. But I somehow learned early on in life that those achievements are not enough to sustain me, and therefore are not the goal. It sounds completely cliche, I know - but it's all the little moments in the journey that bring me joy, not just that one moment at the end. Why? Because that "moment of success" is too singular and fleeting, just like any other single moment. So why not notice and savor ALL the other moments, too? The joy is in the living, not just the achieving!)  [/quote]

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