I have noticed for a while that some very successful, highly-accomplished individuals aren’t satisfied with all they’ve achieved. Doctors, lawyers, folks with Ph.D.s and people who’ve made a lot of money often seem ancy to achieve more.
This is interesting to me, particularly since I often see individuals of this bent on the other end of their academic/age spectrum–the beginning–as they matriculate from high school and college. Frankly, they don’t seem to know what to do with themselves. And they don’t know how to truly celebrate their successes. Even if they go out for drinks or someone throws them a big party, highly-successful people often give very little time to feeling good about what they’ve earned.
I happen to have a couple of daughters who have attained high professional status. One is a medical doctor and another is a psychologist. All along the hard roads to get where they were headed, they’ve also spent more time worrying about the next hurdle than enjoying what they’ve just achieved.
This seems to be a human thing and I think we as a society are more likely to worry about our failures–or the next possible moment in which we might fail–than to celebrate our achievements. What we’ve done right gets forgotten, but we can easily make lists of what we’ve screwed up. Our school teachers aren’t helping with this because they constantly push students and Grade Point Averages have become little gods. But we can’t totally blame the teachers (who do amazing jobs and don’t get paid enough). We need to look at ourselves.
Somehow, we’ve gotten the belief that achievement means we are “almost” good enough. Of course, once the current goal is attained, there are always other achievements…to hopefully make us more convinced that we are worthwhile.
I think it’s more important to be kind. Kind to ourselves and to others. This makes the biggest impact and should be our most constant goal. We need to be kind and to acknowledge the good within and around us. This is the most lasting thing a human can do.