When I was a kid I wanted to be an Olympic athlete, a president, an astronaut, a businesswoman, a lawyer.
Not because of any external pressure or expectations from others but because of my own internal drive to reach a level of excellence at something I found genuinely interesting and where I felt I could be good.
Needless to say, the president, astronaut, and Olympic athlete options are off the table at this point, but the same level of internal desire to keep learning and challenging myself is not.
Quite the opposite.
By 31 I have lived in five countries, speak four languages, studied law and pivoted to business, found my way into organisations that were competitive to get into, and realised that entrepreneurship is and has always been my thing. And my plans from here are even bigger.
I acknowledge that for some these might sound like “you have done nothing special” or, alternatively, like an obsessive pursuit of external stamps of approval, but for me they have always been part of a constant drive to evolve, challenge myself, and improve.
That pursuit is genuinely where my energy comes from.
I guess I could call myself a high achiever.
Someone who aims high, expects a lot from themselves, and finds too much predictability and stability the opposite of a life worth living. Someone who does not compare or compete with others but is focused entirely on being better than yesterday.
(For the record, I was once told in an interview at one of the toughest companies to get into that I was not ambitious enough. Which, as you can see, just proves that there is always more you can be but also that other people's opinions are not the absolute truth.)
But sometimes, when things get tough and there is no clear path ahead, I do wish I was more normal.
Normal in the sense that the conventional way of doing things would be enough. The day after day predictability. Just following the script, you know what I mean.
But it is not enough and has never been, and that is what this one is about.
About the constant push and pull of going forward and challenging yourself. What it actually costs. What it asks of you. And why, despite all of that, moving is the only real option when staying still too long means you are no longer learning or growing.
The gift nobody warns you about
Everyone wants to be in great shape, to be intelligent and educated, to have a successful business, to work at the best firms, to be well groomed, to have the wardrobe, the character, the manners.
The list goes on.
These things, when observed from the outside, are what many people want in one form or another. But equally, many never achieve them because wanting is not the same as actually going after them.
To achieve something that is not handed to you or gained overnight takes time, discipline, boring consistency, and the tolerance for uncertainty about whether any of it will work out.
That is where most people decide they are fine without. Which, honestly, is completely valid. The more content you can be here and now without constantly pursuing something, the more at ease and stress free life probably feels.
But then there are those who keep showing up anyway. Who keep chasing, keep claiming what they feel so strongly belongs to them.
They are a different breed.
Not better, not worse. Just different.
Different because they have what I would call a natural gift of forward momentum.
A drive that does not let them stay too long with the status quo, that makes staying still feel like going backwards.
That same drive, from the other side, is also restlessness. A constant sense that there is more to do, more to become, more to figure out.
But, when you have that gift it comes with real responsibility.
Responsibility toward yourself to stay in balance.
Because if you ignore it you end up miserable in a life that looks completely fine from the outside but feels nothing. And if you let it consume you entirely, you burn out.
It is a gift everyone admires from a distance but nobody warns you what it actually costs and asks of you.
The cost nobody talks about
1. You will lose people along the way
The first thing that tends to happen when you keep doing things off the script is that not everyone understands why. Even people close to you might not agree with your choices or your plans.
And that is fine. They do not have to.
But if you are serious about going after what you want, this is one of the costs you will almost certainly pay.
You might lose friends and people around you simply because you no longer speak the same language. Not because anyone did anything wrong but because the path you are choosing is genuinely difficult to relate to if you are not on it yourself.
First lesson: you cannot be a people pleaser. Not to everyone.
2. The loneliness of walking a path most people around you are not
The second thing that comes with going after your own path is the occasional feeling of loneliness.
Not because you lack social connections or people who care about you, but because finding people with the same mindset, drive, and interests is genuinely hard, especially if you have moved around or live somewhere smaller.
What I hear from many people like this is that at some point you would rather spend time alone than be around people who just do not get it.
And again, it is not that others are doing something wrong.
It is that you are choosing such a specific path that it is hard to find people who genuinely relate, but your people are out there.
Lesson 2: You just have to keep looking, and equally, keep saying no to the invitations and situations that give you nothing.
3. The moments of doubt that hit harder because you expect so much from yourself
Most of the success stories we see around us are never actually overnight successes.
They just get told that way because the years of build up and preparation do not make a good story. Which means it is easy to forget that pretty much everyone who has ever built or created something meaningful has faced serious moments of doubt along the way, often for years, with no visible results to show for the effort.
The flip side of being a high achiever is that those moments hit differently.
Because you expect so much from yourself, the periods where nothing has materialised yet are not just uncomfortable.
They are genuinely hard to sit through, but you have to sit through them.
Lesson 3: Because going back to the normal stability is not really an option. Not because you cannot, but because you know you would end up right back at the same point eventually anyway.
4. The exhaustion of never quite feeling like enough even when things are going well
And then maybe the biggest one.
When you demand a lot from yourself, you might find that you never quite arrive.
No achievement, no finish line, no recognition ever fully feels like you made it.
Yes, they feel good. You are genuinely proud and happy about them.
But equally, it never feels like the final destination because it is not in your nature to stop there. The drive that got you here is already pointing at the next thing.
Which is why it is worth accepting early that this is not about arriving. It is about the pursuit itself.
Lesson 4: The constant progress is the point. And the joy has to come from the smaller everyday things along the way, not just the big milestones, because the big milestones will always lead to new ones.
That is not a flaw. That is just how this particular engine runs.
The comparison trap
I mentioned earlier how being a high achiever is really about the race with yourself, the drive to be better than the earlier version of you rather than better than anyone else.
But that does not mean that watching others you admire succeed, when you have not yet, leaves you completely unmoved.
There is a specific kind of pain that comes with being a high achiever who has not arrived yet.
It is not envy toward the people succeeding.
If anything you are genuinely happy for them because their success proves that what you are after is possible and gives you someone to learn from.
But it does awaken something else.
A kind of envy toward the future version of yourself. The one who has done it. The one you know you are capable of becoming but are simply not yet.
And so you compare.
Not downward, not laterally, but upward.
Toward the version of yourself that the success of others reminds you is possible.
And that comparison creates a very particular kind of impatience. A why have I not done it yet feeling that is hard to shake.
The irony is that high achievers are often the worst at giving themselves credit for how far they have already come.
As long as you have been boldly and consistently pursuing your path you have made real progress.
You are probably today someone you once wanted to be, but you do not see it because you are always looking at where you are not yet rather than where you started from.
The takeaway is not to stop comparing. That is not realistic.
Rather, it is to be aware of what is happening when the feeling hits and to remind yourself, deliberately and regularly, of where you started, what you have built, and what you once thought was impossible that you have already done.
Don’t forget that.
The moments you wish you were different
And then there are the days you just wish you could care less.
Care less about building, leveling up, the borderline impossible projects.
On those days the conventional path sounds genuinely appealing. Someone telling you what to do, a clear structure, a predictable tomorrow. No uncertainty, no constant push.
You start thinking of going back to your old job even.
But ironically, on exactly those days you also remember something.
This is a choice.
Nobody is forcing you to reach for the moon. It is just who you are and what you keep choosing.
And when you remember that, you also remember that the stable conventional path is not a bed of roses either. It just comes with different challenges, different costs, a different kind of discomfort.
So after the bad days you pick yourself back up.
Not because you have to, not to impress anyone or prove a point. But because you are just being true to yourself.
Which may come with the high achiever label or not.
You just keep doing you.
Why you keep going anyway
So after all of this, here is the honest version of why you keep going anyway.
You keep going because stopping does not actually feel like rest.
It feels like going backwards.
And for someone built the way you are, backwards is the most uncomfortable direction there is.
But the cost of continuing is real.
The loneliness, the doubt, the exhaustion, the moments where you wish you were different. All of it is real and none of it disappears. But the cost of stopping, of going back to a life that does not use all of you, turns out to be higher.
We can talk about the opportunity costs here.
Which is not a motivational conclusion. It is just the truth of what it means to be wired this way.
You keep going because the alternative was never actually an option.
Not because someone told you to. Not because the outcome is guaranteed, but because moving forward, even when it is hard, even when nothing is visible yet, is the only version of yourself you actually recognise.
And that, in the end, is both the curse and the gift.
x Maria
I relate so hard. I feel like this is why ambition can actually make satisfaction feel less stable. When every achievement increases your baseline, your future goals keep moving further away. I hope to get better at learning how to let enjoy progress before the goalposts move again.