Dr. Shadé Zahrai

It's great, right?

It's a cool study.

What can we take from that?

Well, having something outside of work that we can pour ourselves into, especially something creative, because we know about the impact that has in the brain, that allows us to remind ourselves, hey, even if I didn't do well today at work, even if I didn't achieve this thing that I wanted to, I get to go and take on that character in that play.

I get to go and pick up my guitar.

I get to go and paint that beautiful painting.

And fascinatingly, hobbies, especially creative hobbies, have been found to increase your self-esteem, which increases your sense of self-acceptance.

So it's a very odd one, but I would encourage you if you struggle here, go and pick up a hobby and embrace the messiness of being a beginner.

Yes, I love that you've mentioned this.

So there's two elements we need to touch on here.

So this lack of acceptance that develops early on, where we feel like we must perform to be of value or to earn the attention of others.

that leads us to perfectionistic tendencies as adults, where we set these very, very, very high standards for ourselves, beat ourselves up when we inevitably don't reach them, and then just set the next high standard.

And so for a lot of people, this does propel them forward.

This does propel them to amazing heights.

But as you said, they might reach that number one pinnacle, and then they stop and think,

This is not what I wanted.

This is not the life that I wanted to lead.

And so what we need to think about with success is two elements.

Okay, there is the material success, the status, the external success, but then there is that internal feeling that really should be coming with it, the sense of satisfaction, the sense of fulfillment.

And so anyone who is driven by a lack of acceptance, what we see in a lot of really high performers is that if they're driven by this, yes, they have amazing work ethic.