About This Episode
Welcome to The Overachievers Podcast, where I’m here to remind you that success shouldn’t come at the cost of your wellbeing. I’m Keith Blakemore-Noble, and in this episode, I take a look into the real reason why working harder (and pushing through discomfort) might not be working for you anymore. If you’re someone who already operates at an incredible pace, raising your standards, taking on more responsibility, yet still finding yourself feeling stretched and tired, you’re not alone.
I’m not here to give you the same old advice about being more productive or pushing yourself to the next level. Instead, let’s explore why those instincts might have stopped serving you, and why the answer isn’t more pressure. I’ll share common patterns I see in overachievers, like confusing care with demand, or letting responsibility quietly expand until rest itself feels undeserved.
This episode, and this podcast as a whole, aren’t about fixing you, because you’re not broken. It’s about helping you see yourself clearly, so you can redefine what success means for you now. And as we move forward, I’ll guide you through understanding the difference between healthy drive and unsustainable self-pressure, and help you reflect on what sustainable success could look like if you didn’t have to keep pushing so hard. Take a moment, breathe, and join me as we explore a gentler, more mindful path to achievement.
Key Themes
- Success shouldn’t cost everything
- Overachievers and instinctive self-pressure
- The difference between care and pressure
- Importance of sustainable, dynamic success
- Reclaiming rest and self-awareness
If You Prefer Video
Transcript
This is the Overachievers Podcast for people who want success without the burnout. If working harder used to help you, but now just feels heavier, this episode will help you to understand why.
Hey. Hello. My name’s Keith Blakemore-Noble. I’m the mindset master, and I work with people who carry a lot.
In the first episode of the Overachievers Podcast, we explored why you are an overachiever. Not because of where you’ve arrived, but because of how you think, respond, and operate. In that episode, we started to set the theme for the Overachievers Podcast, namely, that success shouldn’t cost everything, and that pushing harder is not always the answer.
Today, it’s about anchoring that in that idea firmly and properly. Because if we don’t slow this part down, if we don’t get this right, everything else in the whole podcast is going to just sound like I’m giving the usual old, tired, jaded advice. And this podcast is absolutely not about giving advice. Let me be very clear about one thing. This podcast, the Overachievers Podcast, is not here to help you to do more.
It is not here to make you more productive. And it is certainly not here to push you to yet another level of output. Most overachievers are already operating at a level that would exhaust other people. Let’s face it, if you’re like most overachievers, you are already holding yourself to high standards. You already take responsibility seriously. You already push through when things feel uncomfortable. So when something starts to feel off, the instinct is rarely to stop. It’s to tighten, to be more disciplined, to be more organised, to be more focused.
And, yeah, that instinct makes sense. I get it. I get it. It worked before, right? But this podcast is about understanding when that instinct stops serving you. Not because you’re weak, not because you’re failing, but because you’re no longer in the same stage of life that you were when those rules were written. They got you to where you are now, but they won’t get you to where you want to go next. Let me share with you a pattern that I see again and again with overachievers. Someone comes to me feeling stretched, not falling apart, not burnout, just tired in a way that just doesn’t.
Doesn’t quite fit. I mean, they’re capable, they’re responsible. They’re already doing a lot. And almost always their instinct is the same. They decide they need more structure, they need more Discipline. They need tighter systems, so they plan more carefully, they work even longer, and they raise their standards yet again. Sound familiar? And yes, yes, yes, for a short while, it helps. Things start to feel more controlled, more organised, maybe even a little calmer.
But then something interesting happens. The effort keeps increasing, but the relief never comes. They’re still tired, they’re still carrying a lot. They still feel like success is costing a whole lot more than it should. And that. That is usually the moment that they realise this is not a motivation problem, it’s a sustainability problem. Key thing to realise. Let’s pause for a moment.
Let’s just take a moment reflecting on this, a question for you. Where in your life are you responding to pressure by tightening things up? Not because it’s helping, but because it’s familiar? Or to put it another way, where are you doing more and more and more simply because stopping would feel uncomfortable? You don’t necessarily need answers right now. More important is to notice where your instinct goes when you think about these things, when you think about those situations, where are you responding to pressure by tightening things up just because it’s what you’ve always done? Or where do you keep doing more and more because stopping would feel uncomfortable? What comes up for you when you think about that? Where does your instinct go? Just something to cogitate upon, something to bear in mind as we go through the next few episodes of the podcast. You see, here is an important distinction that most overachievers have never really been taught. You are not driven by pressure, you are driven by care. You’re not driven by pressure, you’re driven by care. You care about doing things well, you care about people, you care about outcomes, which is all well and good, admirable. But pressure enters when care turns into demand.
That care that you have about those things becomes demand that’s placed upon you. And that’s where you get pressure. When responsibility becomes expectation, when standards become an obligation, or even when drive becomes self pressure. At that point, when those things happen, effort stops feeling clean. You’re still moving forwards, but it just feels heavier. You know what I mean? Is it sounding familiar? The more pressure you add, the narrower your thinking becomes. Pressure might get results in the short term, but for the long term, oh boy, is it an exhausting strategy? It really is. And this is something which is really important to clarify, something that we really need to get sustainable success.
So not just success, but sustainable success that we can keep going for the long term. Sustainable success is not doing less just for the sake of it. It’s absolutely not lowering your standards. No, no, no. It’s not becoming complacent. It’s not opting out of ambition. It’s not even chasing balance as a fixed state. Sustainable success is dynamic.
It changes as your life changes. What worked in the past when perhaps you had fewer responsibilities may not work now. What worked before got you to where you are now, but it won’t get you to where you want to be. Insisting on using the same internal rules forever. That’s one of the fastest ways for overachievers to burn out. This is the way it’s always been. We’ve always done it this way. If you always do what you’ve always done, you always get what you’ve always got.
You got to where you are with those internal rules. They brought you to here. They won’t get you to the next stage. Here’s something that many overachievers I find unsettling. At some point, your identity quietly becomes tied to coping, to being reliable, to being the one who manages. And when that happens, rest, which is vitally important for every single one of us, rest starts to feel undeserved. Not because you don’t need it, but because your sense of values has kind of drifted. This podcast, it’s about gently reclaiming that space, not by forcing change, but by understanding what is actually driving you, understanding where you want to go, why you want to go there, reminding yourself of those things from time to time.
How are we going to do that? Well, over the next few episodes, we are going to slow things right down. We are going to explore why rest feels uncomfortable. Rest is essential. If you don’t rest, you will burn out. If you don’t find time to rest, your mind and body will force you to rest at a time that is not convenient to you. We’re going to explore how responsibility will quietly expand to fill every available moment that you have. We’re going to explore when high standards turn into self pressure. High standards are a great thing.
Self pressure, not so much. We’re going to look at when one turns into the other and how we can notice that and how we can address that. And we’re also going to look at why doing more just often stops working. Important thing to bear in mind, none of this is about fixing you. You’re not broken. You are not broken. We’re not fixing you here. Instead, all of this, the entire podcast, is about helping you to see yourself clearly enough so that you can choose differently.
Remember I said earlier, none of this is about giving advice. Absolutely not. Different things work for different people. We’ve said that before. We will say it again. There’s no one size fits all solution. So different things work for different people. It’s about helping you to see yourself clearly enough so that you can choose what works for you.
Just before we finish this episode, we’re keeping these nice and short. 1015 minute little bites. Gives you enough to be getting on with, but not so much that it takes up all of your time. So a final question for you, final thing for you to reflect upon as you move forward through the rest of this week. Hold this question gently. What would success for you look like if it didn’t require you to constantly push yourself forward? You don’t need an answer today. Just let the question stay with you, see what comes up. What does success for you look like? If it doesn’t require you? Or if it didn’t require you to constantly push yourself forwards? What would that success look like for you? As I say, you don’t need an answer right now.
Let the question stay with you, see what comes up over the next few days. Notice one thing with all of this where is success currently costing you more than you expected? No fixing, no judgment, just awareness. It’s the first step to succeeding is to be aware. So just cultivate an awareness of where success is currently costing you more than you expected. That’s it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening to the Overachievers podcast. If this if this episode resonated, please do give us a Like a Comment a Share Subscribe Follow the Show subscribe on your favourite platforms. Stay with me for the next one, where we will explore the Overachiever Trap and we’ll look at why capable people end up working harder without feeling better.
I’m Keith Blakemore-Noble, the Mindset Master, and I’ll be your guide as we explore a healthier way to succeed. Sam.
