Sunday 5th July
One of the stranger things about achievement is how differently it behaves for different people.
Two people can reach exactly the same goal. One experiences satisfaction that gradually settles into the background, becoming part of how they understand themselves and adding evidence about what they’re capable of. The other experiences something fleeting. A day or two of relief, perhaps, before the internal register has already moved on to what comes next.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently.
Mastery matters. Developing competence, stretching ourselves and experiencing progress are important parts of psychological wellbeing. There is something deeply satisfying about becoming better at something we care about.
But I’ve become increasingly interested in the psychological role we sometimes ask achievement to fulfil.
Self-Determination Theory has spent more than forty years studying human motivation, and one of its central ideas is that motivation differs not only in strength, but in quality.
We can work hard because we enjoy developing a skill, care about the contribution, or have chosen a direction that feels genuinely our own. And we might work just as hard because not doing so brings us into contact with something uncomfortable about ourselves.
A sense of inadequacy. Guilt. Shame. The sense that we’re falling behind. The feeling that, without the next achievement, we become somehow less acceptable.
Psychologists sometimes call this introjected regulation - pressure that has been internalised, so nobody needs to stand over us. In fact, it can even present as contentiousness and rewarded as ‘intrinsic motivation’, when really it feels obligatory and fear-based.
In fact, some of the most capable people I meet have become extraordinarily good at using internal pressure to move themselves forward. The promotion comes. The business grows. The qualification is earned. Yet, some people describe feeling removed from the emotional experience of these achievements.
I’ve written before about The Moving Bar: the way an achievement can reset the standard rather than satisfy it. You reach the thing that was supposed to mean you were doing well, and before long, doing well becomes the new baseline.
However, achievement alone isn’t very good at sustainably regulating our sense of adequacy.
That doesn’t make achievement unimportant (I actually think it makes the opposite case).
It allows achievement to return to its proper place: as a source of mastery, growth, contribution, pleasure, challenge. Rather than repeatedly asking it to settle how we feel about ourselves.
This week, you might try tracking the moments when you push yourself. Mentally is fine, or a note in your phone is enough.
But take note of something you’re moving towards, and then what you imagine you’d feel if you paused for a bit.
You may notice that some effort is organised around interest, commitment, or something you genuinely value such as contribution.
You may notice that some is organised around avoiding a feeling such as guilt, shame, inadequacy, falling behind, disappointing someone, becoming less impressive.
We often don’t fit neatly in a column, and the point isn’t to sanitise our motivation. We’re are more complicated that that. But it’s simply to evaluate, on the balance of things, the type of fuel we are using to move.
Often the problem isn’t the distance we are trying to travel, but what the cost is to keep us travelling.
As always, hold it lightly. This letter doesn’t aim to undermine the importance of achievement, especially as it relates to our sense of self-efficacy and overall wellbeing. It aims to challenge how we approach achievement, and the kinds of things we ask it to do for us.
Shoni
Dr Shoni Marshall-Edwards
Clinical Psychologist · AHPRA PSY0004030165
Alba Psychology · Online · Australia and New Zealand