Introduction
Welcome to The Overachievers Podcast, for those times when achieving everything is still not enough.
Think about the last genuinely significant thing you achieved. Now be honest about what you actually felt in the minutes afterwards.
Was it satisfaction? Or was it relief?
That single question is more revealing than most people realise, and it sits at the heart of today’s episode. Because approval seeking in high performers hides in plain sight. The work is good, the results are real, the person is driven and often admired. Nothing on the surface suggests anything is wrong, which is precisely what makes this pattern so persistent.
In this episode, we look at the pattern that has been quietly running behind several of the themes we have covered recently, why relief and satisfaction are not the same thing, and what it actually means to seek approval from the only person whose opinion genuinely matters.
Key Themes
- Approval seeking disguised as excellence
- The difference between satisfaction and relief
- Why critical feedback outweighs ten pieces of praise
- Whose approval actually matters
- The pattern behind perfectionism, fear, and moving goalposts
If You Prefer Video
Connected Blog
Relief Is Not Satisfaction
Approval-seeking hides in plain sight, because it looks exactly like excellence. Here’s the one tell that gives it away.
Related Blogs and Episodes
Why You Feel Like You’re Failing
You keep achieving and it never feels like enough. That is not a performance problem. It is a psychological one. Here is what is actually happening.
Naming What You’ve Been Living
You cannot work with what you cannot name. Here is how overachievers begin to understand the pattern they have been living.
Episode 007 – Achievement and Self-Worth
Explore why achievement can feel tied to self-worth and discover how to find security beyond your successes, without burning out.
Episode 010 – Ambition Without Anxiety
Explore the difference between curiosity-driven and fear-driven ambition so you can achieve success without burnout, with Keith Blakemore Noble.
Transcript
This is the Overachievers Podcast for people who want success without the burnout. Think about the last genuinely significant thing that you achieved. Now, be honest about what you actually felt in the minutes afterwards. Was it satisfaction or was it relief? That single question is more revealing than most people realise, and it’s where today’s episode starts. Welcome to The Overachievers Podcast with Keith Blakemore-Noble, because success shouldn’t cost everything. Hello, welcome back. I’m Keith Blakemore-Noble, The Overachievers Coach, and today we’re looking at something that sits behind a lot of what we’ve covered in the, in the most recent episodes. It’s not a new pattern exactly.
It’s more like the pattern that’s been quietly running the other ones. The pattern behind the pattern, if you will. If you haven’t already, follow or subscribe, whatever platform you’re listening on. It’s the easiest way to make sure that you don’t miss an episode. Give us a like, a review as well. Share it with your friends. Approval seeking in high performers hides in plain sight, and it does that because it looks exactly like excellence. The work is good.
The results are real. The person is reliable, driven. and often admired. Nothing on the surface suggests that anything is wrong, which is precisely what makes this pattern so persistent. There’s no obvious signal telling you to look closer because the strategy works. It produces genuine results. The world rewards the very behaviour that’s quietly costing that person Everything. Here is how you actually spot it, and it isn’t in the achievement itself.
It’s in what happens afterwards. If the feeling that follows a win is satisfaction, something was expressed. If the feeling is relief, something was avoided. Relief means that a threat was dodged. Not a value realised. And relief fades fast, which is exactly why the next thing has to start almost immediately. A few things tend to keep this running underneath the surface. Worth becomes contingent on output, so it has to be earned again and again with each new result.
The goalposts never quite bank. Each achievement simply resets the baseline rather than setting— rather than settling anything. And one piece of critical feedback tends to outweigh 10 pieces of praise because the critical one, that confirms whatever fear was already sitting there. None of that looked like approval-seeking from the outside. It looks like diligence, and that’s exactly why it’s so easy to miss it in yourself. Let’s go back to the question that we had at the very start of this episode. After your last significant achievement, was the dominant feeling satisfaction Or was it relief? Do take a proper moment to have a think about that. Really put yourself in— picture yourself in that moment where you had your last significant achievement and just notice the feeling, the emotion there.
Is it satisfaction? Is it relief? Don’t answer on reflex. Take a moment to fully absorb it and realise what was actually there. There is a distinction worth holding carefully here because it is easy to overcorrect. The aim isn’t to stop caring about what anyone thinks. That isn’t health. That’s not good for you. Doesn’t help. It’s a different kind of defence, and that comes at its own cost.
Being responsive to feedback— Hey, that’s entirely fine. Needing approval to feel acceptable, that is the actual problem. And there is a second layer to be aware of as well. Approval seeking is often narrowly targeted. Someone can be genuinely indifferent to most people’s opinions while still quietly desperate for the regard of one specific figure, usually Some version of whoever originally set the terms. So, I don’t care what people think can be entirely true and still miss the point completely. Here’s what makes leaning on other people’s approval particularly unreliable when you actually look at it clearly. Other people are not fully aware of your goals.
They aren’t heading where you’re heading. They don’t hold your best interests the way that you do. Not because they’re unkind, but simply because they are living their own version of the same pattern. They’re running their own version of this same audit. So it makes sense that placing real weight on their approval is At best meaningless, at worst it’s actively costly because it means the direction of your effort is being set by people who are never actually looking where you are going. If you’ve been following these past few episodes, you might notice something now that ties a few of these episodes and a few of these threads together. The reluctance to finish something. The fear of what gets exposed once it’s done.
The bar that keeps moving the moment you reach it. All of these share this same root: the need to avoid disapproval dressed up as high standards. You don’t need to have caught those earlier episodes for any of this to really hit for you. But if you want to go back and hear them with this in mind, they’re there. They’re ready for you. And this episode might hit a little differently second time around you listen to it. Remember, there is a massive difference between seeking approval and actual high standards. When we seek approval from others, we’re placing, we’re placing our destiny in their hands, in the hands of people who don’t necessarily have the same goals, haven’t got the same drive, not coming from the same place, or not going to the same place.
They have their own goals, their own needs, their own standards, their own judgments, none of which Have any connection to you. So why would you seek approval for what you’re doing from people who don’t know what you’re doing? Not really. The only person we should be seeking approval from is ourselves, because we’re the ones who came up with whatever it is that we’re doing. We’re the ones who come up with the goals that we follow. We’re the ones who decide what we do. We are the only one whose approval actually, truly, genuinely matters when you get right down to it. Now, yes, it’s good to have other people approving of what we’re doing as a secondary, a secondary approval. Or if we’re doing stuff for others, yes, their approval of what we’re doing to ensure that we’re meeting what they asked of us.
Yes, that’s relevant, but fundamentally the person whose approval genuinely, absolutely, really matters is our own. All the rest is secondary. That’s not to say we ignore feedback. Feedback can be incredibly useful, but fundamentally it’s our own standards that we’re holding to. We’re the only one who can make that judgment of whether we have succeeded or not. That’s it for this episode. Next month, we’re going to pick things up. Episode 29 is Performing for an Audience of One.
And we’re going to look at what happens when you are no longer just seeking approval, but actively performing for people who may not even be in the room anymore. That’s coming up in episode 29, the next episode, Performing for an Audience of One. For now, what I’d like you to think about over the next few days, think about this: if no one ever knew that you had done it, would you still want to do it? If no one ever knew, ever found out that you had done it, if no one ever knew you’d done it, would you still want to do it? Interesting question. That’s what I’d like to leave you with to think about over the coming week. If today’s episode has resonated with you, I really hope it has, then it would mean a lot to me if you leave a review or a rating on the platform that you’re listening to this. It helps other people find the show. It helps me to know how this is hitting for you. please do share it with someone you think would benefit.
And if you haven’t already, hit follow, like, subscribe on whatever platform you listen to this so that you are here for every episode. Once you’re done, head over to keithbn.link/top. You’ll find all of the episodes, including this one. Within that episode, you’ll find the show notes along with some additional resources that are worth exploring if you want to go in a little bit more depth. That’s it for this episode. Thank you so much for joining me wherever or however you’re joining me. Thank you. I appreciate having you with me on the journey.
I look forward to seeing you in the next one. I’m Keith Blakemore-Noble, the Overachievers Coach, and I will be your guide as we explore a healthier way to succeed.
