Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:00:14]:
Hello. Welcome back. Welcome. Welcome to another exciting, hopefully interesting episode. Again, it’s another solo episode.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:00:41]:
Yep. Odd numbered episodes are the solo ones. Even numbered ones bring guests on. Well, at least that’s the pattern. Until, until it isn’t. Until it changes. Who knows? Anyway, welcome, welcome, welcome. Thank you so much for joining.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:00:54]:
My name is Keith Blakemore-Noble. I am your host. Do remember you can find us on all the major podcast platforms, including Apple Podcasts, Amazon music, Audible, Spotify, YouTube. We’re syndicated to grow radio, loads more as well. Wherever you find, wherever you get podcasts, you can find it this, this, this show or you can find it on my website, keithplatemorenoble.com show. You’ll find all of the episodes there going back five and a half years. Five and a half years of content. Good lord.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:01:28]:
Well, I never. And remember, if you enjoy this, if you like it, give us a like. Give us a like a. Share a comment to subscribe, Give us a review on your favourite platform. Share it far and wide. Please do. It all helps to spread the word to help other people to, to, to catch the show, which is how we grow. So today we are looking at overachieving.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:01:56]:
The episode is called the one about overachievers, mainly because there’s only a limited amount of space you can put for a title. If I were to give it the full title, it would be Overachievers, Rebels, Game Changers and Visionaries. That’s kind of a lot to fit in the podcast title really, isn’t it? So we’ll settle for the one about overachievers. So I guess I should start by saying hello, it’s great to be here. And I have a confession. I am an overachiever. It is true. For a long time I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or if it was a bad thing.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:02:32]:
In fact, for a long time I didn’t even want to admit it, kind of to myself really. The reason being that society often paints overachieving and overachievement as something negative. Something bad leads to stress, to burnout, affection, all these sorts of things. And I’ve done some, done some polls and some questions on a bit of asking the market about this on LinkedIn and other platforms and I’ll share the results of that as we go through this episode. But yet some. There are a lot of myths and misconceptions about overachievement. However, the reality is it is something which I have come to embrace and that is that being an overachiever is not something to hide. Being an overachiever is not something to be ashamed of.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:03:32]:
Be proud of it, yes. Or don’t be proud of it either. Either is good. It’s just who you are. It was who I am. It’s who we are. Overachievers are just, that’s who they are. It’s, it’s not, not something that we do.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:03:45]:
It’s not something we, we set out to do. It’s just, it’s a way of being, it’s kind of a by overachievement. It’s a byproduct of, of mindset. And we’ll explore some of the myths about this. We’ll explore some of the advantages or some of the positives of overachievement. We’ll explore how you might start adjusting your mindset to start embracing overachievement yourself. So why do I claim that I am an overachiever? Well, it’s basically as I’ve looked back over life, when I set out to do things, I, where I achieve them, I tend to not just achieve them, but really achieve them. I’ll give you some examples.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:04:34]:
As some of you might know. Before I started doing, before I became a coach, hypnotherapist, nlp, master practitioner, trainer, speaker, all those sorts of things which I’ve been doing for over 15 years now. Before that 20 years I was working in IT and my whole approach running my, my team just means to start with and I had a small team and then we started having responsibility for other, other departments, other countries, sites in other continents. Because it was a multi, a global company. My approach was always let’s give our customers which were internal to the building, internal to the company. Because we were IT for the company itself. We didn’t contract out our stuff to support our external was internal. It was a semiconductor design company.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:05:26]:
My approach was always, hey, let’s make our systems the best we can make them so that the engineers using them can just get on with their jobs without having to worry about working with the computers, getting into work in particular, just take the IT out of the equation so that they can just get on with their job doing what they do, creating amazing products. And the whole way I set up the IT thing was built around that. I was in it for 20 years. After a while I decided, you know what, maybe I should look at joining, seeing if I can apply to join the British Computer Society, which is the Chartered Institute for IT Professionals. So I had a look and I applied and they got membership, membership level. They’ve also got fellowship member, member, which is like the high, the height here. So I had a look, I thought, right, let’s take a look, see what there is, see what I need to do in order to become good enough to be able to apply to be a member. And I had a look through the stuff and just because of the way I’d been doing all the IT and the way we’d been building this up to support everybody who made use of our stuff and the whole approach that I developed for it, I didn’t become a member of the British Computer Society, I became a Chartered IT Professional and a Fellow of the British Computer Society without having to do anything extra to achieve those levels.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:06:56]:
Like, whoa, okay, well, a bit of a fluke, I suppose, but the more I looked at it, I think like once I did, once I left IT and started my journey through coaching, obviously I got certified. I didn’t just get a certificate. Currently I’ve got 16 certificates certified, 16 different certifications in NLP, hypnosis speaking, coaching, training, right up to train the trainer in all of these 16 certificates so far. I probably got more actually, but I can’t find them. So, yeah, books. For years, almost, almost lifelong, wanted to be an author. And then I got a chance to, to create a book to be an author. And that was winning in Life Work Volume 1.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:07:51]:
See, there’s there, that’s the overachiever bit appearing in there. Even, even. At that point I called the collection Volume One. No plans to do anymore. In fact, by the time we’d finished creating that first. But I thought, I’m never doing this again. That soon quickly fell by the wayside. But something in my mind said, hey, let’s call this Volume one.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:08:15]:
Let’s set the expectation that there will be more here. I wanted to be an author, to have a book out there. I’ve got six books out so far, four in the Winning in Life and Work series, two solo books, and yes, I’ve got more books on the hard drive that are in various states of development as well. Overachieving, it’s just a way. It’s a result of how you go about doing what you do naturally. Oh, but wait a minute, Keith. You can’t be an overachiever. You’re not a multi millionaire with a global multinational business.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:08:51]:
No, you’re absolutely right, I’m not. And that’s the thing. Overachieving doesn’t or overachievement. Being an overachiever doesn’t guarantee success in everything. What it does mean is simply that you achieve more than you otherwise would if you weren’t an overachiever. That’s all it means. It doesn’t guarantee that you will be the top of the top of the top of everything. But what it does guarantee is the success you do have, the achievements you do create, will be more than if you weren’t an overachiever.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:09:26]:
That’s what that’s all it means. So I want to reassure you that if you’re someone who pushes yourself with that little bit harder, sets higher goals, refuses to settle, looks to create the best you can, you’re not alone. You are in great company. We’ll have a look at how you can embrace overachievement in a way that fuels you without burnout. And we’ll also have a look at some of the look at three really successful people who embody overachievement as a powerful force. We’ll take a look at all of those in a moment. Before we do that, I’m going to dive into having a look at some of the myths around overachieving, because there are a lot it’s before we do remember, if you like us, give us a share, a comment, a subscriber review. Let’s, let’s, let’s, let’s overachieve with this podcast.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:10:23]:
Let’s get it out there. Let’s get loads of people listening to it and catching and subscribing it. Subscribing it, subscribing to it. You know what I mean? I hope you know what I hope somebody knows what I mean. Fears of overachieving I mentioned I’ve been asking various questions on platforms LinkedIn mainly also on Facebook and some of the other socials. And one of the big questions I ask people is do you consider yourself to be an overachiever? And on LinkedIn, I have to say, majority of people who responded to that poll did say they felt they were overachievers. The options were you’re an overachiever, you’re not what you’d like to be, you’re not, you don’t want to be. And overachieving is something nobody should should strive for.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:11:18]:
Most people or the majority, the most popular answer was that they are overachievers, which I guess you’d kind of expect given LinkedIn is a platform for business professionals, business owners, all these sorts of things. What was interesting though, was when I asked people what overachieving means to them, what they think of when. When we say or when we talk about overachieving. And there were a few. A few myths that cropped up. There’s a few myths, there’s a few misunderstandings about overachieving and overachievement. The common ones were, oh, you shouldn’t be an overachiever, because if you. If you try to be an overachiever, you’ll end up achieving nothing because you’ll be chasing perfect.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:12:08]:
You’ll be trying to make everything perfect, and you’ll never succeed because you cannot create things that are perfect. That’s not being an overachiever. That’s chasing perfectionism. That’s chasing. Or that’s being a perfectionist. Perfectionism, Chasing perfection. And as we know, we’ve. We’ve talked about it in previous episodes, hopefully, as we all know, there is no such thing as perfection.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:12:34]:
No such thing as perfection. You cannot create perfection chasing after perfection. Oh, you’re not going to get anywhere because you can never create perfection. Overachievement is not about perfectionism. Absolutely not about perfection. In fact, overachievement is the opposite of perfectionism. It’s achieving more and more and more because we know we can’t make things perfect, but we can certainly achieve things. Another thing that people said, oh, the problem with overachievement is it means you end up working all the hours of the day and you end up getting burnt out.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:13:09]:
No, no, no, that’s not being an overachiever. That’s being a workaholic. That’s burnout. And burnout is absolutely a massive problem for a lot of people. But it doesn’t come. It’s not born from being an overachiever. It’s born from. From being a workaholic not recognising that we do need to take breaks.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:13:29]:
We do need to allow time for ourself. And another common thing that came up was people saying, oh, the problem with being an overachiever is you’re always comparing yourself with others. And if you don’t achieve the same as they do, then you feel bad because you’re not as good as they are. And again, that’s not overachieving. That’s comparison. And you’re absolutely right. We ought not compare ourselves with others, mainly because we don’t know what’s going on for other people. Whenever we compare ourselves with others, we’re comparing what’s going on inside us with what we can see on the outside of them.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:14:12]:
We’re not comparing like with like. We can think of the analogy of the swan Gliding serenely across the top of the. The lake. We don’t see the feet and legs underneath paddling like fury to, to keep it, keep it going in the direction it wants and to fight the fight the currents and everything. One should never compare oneself with others. And overachieving isn’t about comparison with what others achieve. Overachieving is simply achieving more than you thought you would achieve or more than maybe you set out to achieve. Overachievement, it’s.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:14:50]:
It’s a state of being. It’s a mindset. I guess the most important way I could describe it is overachievement is about the journey. It’s about enjoying the journey, making the absolute most of the journey. And it’s doing this which creates the destination. That’s what overachievement is about. I mean, overachievers, we’re not workaholics who never rest. We’re not never satisfied.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:15:21]:
We’re not overly competitive. We don’t always even care about success. Sometimes overachievement comes from simply really focusing on something that you’re really enjoying, which means you put a lot more into it, which means you achieve a lot more. Some of you might know, I’m part occasional amateur magician and one of the things which, which I read in one magician says that in a lot of cases with magic, it’s not. The really successful magician is simply the one who’s prepared to put so much effort into something, so much more effort than anybody else would ever think of putting into it, that you then create amazing results. It’s because they enjoy it so much. They do so much more than anyone, anyone else would, which is why they then overachiever and create these amazing results. The reality is overachievers aren’t just working harder than anyone else.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:16:31]:
They’re thinking bigger, they’re thinking grander. They’re putting their all into what they’re doing, but without overworking, without being workaholic, without seeking perfectionism. They’re driven by passions, driven by creativity, driven by a desire to push boundaries. And they’re driven by enjoying what they’re doing. The enjoyment is a massive part of it. And again, or sorry, I say again because that’s daft, I haven’t said this first yet. So another thing about achievement, it’s not going right. I’m going to set out to achieve all of these things, which is more than anyone else does.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:17:08]:
That’s. That’s not being an overachiever, that’s being an achiever because you’re achieving what you set out to achieve. Overachieving is where the results that you create are greater than you expected they would be simply because of the way in which you go about it. Let’s take a quick look at three very famous, very successful overachievers. Let’s start with the founder of the Vertex, Sir Richard Branson. Now he left school as soon as he could, but by that time he’d already created a successful student magazine. He already had a business when he left school. He’s gone on to create, I believe it’s over 400 different companies that he’s created across wide range of industries.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:18:03]:
I think we can say that’s definitely, definitely a sign of overachiever, of being an overachiever there. He’s fuelled by curiosity, by willingness to take risks and above all by fun. Fun is a major value for Sir Richard. I’ll give you an example of one of, one of the ways in which he demonstrates this. Virgin Airways, the very first Virgin Airways flight, do you know how that came about? He was out in, I think it was around the Caribbean or around the Virgin Islands, around there somewhere. Anyway, he’d been there. He was attempting to fly back to London and for whatever reason the flight was cancelled. And it’s one of these ones where there’s not multiple flights a day.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:18:50]:
I don’t know if there were one flight a day or maybe a couple of flights a week or something. Anyway, it was a significant problem for everybody there attempting to get back to London and lots of people were frantically trying to find alternative carriers or, or trying to find ways they could extend their stay and book on future flights and so on. Richard, what did he do? He found a company there that charters air, charters flights. You can charter an airplane and charter crew to fly you anywhere. He found them, found out how much it would cost, found out how much, how many people the airplane could take, worked out the price per ticket in order to, to basically cover all the costs, borrowed a sheet of cardboard and a marker pen, flight to London tickets, put the price on and stood there in the airport until he detracted enough people who paid him. He was able to pay the charter, he was able to charter the flight, flew them all home. If that’s not overachievement, I don’t know what is. The co founder of Apple, Steve Jobs co FOUNDER of Apple he wasn’t just interested in making computers.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:20:04]:
He wanted to revolutionise technology. The stuff that they came up with. He had a much grander picture, knew where he wanted to take all of this. Apple Were never first to market with, with, well, anything but what they did create. It just worked, to use a phrase which they have used it just technology. Now Steve is an interesting, interesting example because he got fired, he got fired from Apple, he got fired from his own company. He didn’t, he didn’t let them get him down. He went on, did other stuff and ended up being hired back by Apple.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:20:56]:
Just about the point where they were on the verge of bankruptcy and turned them around. They became the world’s first trillion dollar company, the world’s first 3 trillion dollar company because of the ethos which he embedded into the whole company. An example, they were looking at making a small desktop computer. So he asked his engineers, what’s the smallest they could make it? The smallest footprint they could make. This computer engineer team went away, came back, said, oh, we can make it this size. Said, okay, still looks a bit big. Size shrank dimensions. Went away.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:21:38]:
The chief engineer went away, discussed with his team, came back, said it’s a push, but we could just fit it in that size with the specs you want. So you went, okay, could you make it this size, even smaller? They went away, study went, came back, said, no, you know what, we just cannot make it that small. Can we make that small? Steve went, that’s a shame because that’s the size you’re going to make it. Sure enough, they went away and they found a way to create the Mac Mini in such a small footprint. Anyway, Steve Jobs, I think we can agree, definitely an overachiever. And one final example I’m going to give of overachievers if I say two words, Live Aid. I mentioned Live Aid, which, remember, was 40 years ago. What comes to mind, what act comes to mind, almost certainly Queen, Freddie Mercury, they stole the show.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:22:35]:
It’s their performance later to be the best live performance ever. The thing with Freddie, he didn’t want to be a singer, he wanted to be a legend. And that was present all throughout their development. I mean, yes, when they were in their stadium phase, you could absolutely see it. But go back earlier in, in their development, the whole of Queen embodied this, their, their passion, the creativity, pushing the artistic limits, dedication to their craft. They had, they’d done three albums, but they were verging on bankruptcy. They were pretty much broke. It came to do the fourth album, kind of like a make or break album.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:23:24]:
If this one didn’t succeed well, didn’t do well, they were going to have to basically quit, break up the band and go back into normal jobs. They had very little Money. Most bands would probably go, you know what, let’s play it safe, let’s play it small, do it low cost and build up Queen. No, no, not them. They went all out. They created what I believe was the most expensively produced album in the world at that time. One of the songs on it, they wanted multi, multi, multi harmonies. Push the equipment, push the technology to the limit with the harmonies and the overdubs.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:24:03]:
Re recording, re recording, re recording. So much so, the tape was almost becoming see through. They were reusing it so much to stack and layer all these vocals on it. That song they wanted to release as a single, the record company went, that’s nearly six minutes long. It’s. It’s got like so many different parts to it, different aspects to it and operatic bit in it. That’s. It’s not the sort of thing that’s going to do well in the chart.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:24:29]:
Record company did not want that to be the single from the album. Freddie gave a copy of it to his friend DJ Kenny Everett, who promised not to play it live on air. And of course, that weekend he played snippets of it multiple times over the weekend. EMI switchboard was jammed on the Monday with people going, hey, where can we buy this song? EMI released it as a single. Bohemian Rhapsody went to number one. It actually has been number one in the UK charts twice so far. It’s often voted as one of the best, if not the best, best song of all time. All because they really pushed the limits.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:25:10]:
They knew what they wanted to create. They weren’t gonna allow themselves to be held back. It was like, you know, do or die. We do this, we create A Night at the Opera, we release it. If it fails, we’ve given that all. And boy, did they achieve. These three people out there didn’t just succeed, they overachieved. And they overachieved in ways which changed the world.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:25:37]:
Now, not every overachiever is going to change the world. And that’s all right, because remember, as an overachiever, you’re not comparing yourself with others. You’re simply enjoying the journey, enjoying creating whatever it is you create. Remember, it is a mindset. It’s a way of being. And it’s not setting out to achieve more. Because if you set out to achieve more and you achieve more, basically you’ve achieved what you set out to achieve. That is not overachieving.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:26:05]:
The overachievement is a byproduct, a byproduct of this life well lived. This fascination with your passion, harnessing your passion Your drive, your ambition. You set goals. By all means, set big goals, but make them strategic, make them part of your overall plan. Make them ambitious, make them achievable so that you don’t burn out chasing the impossible. Aim or focus on progress, not on perfection. Perfectionism kills so many projects. Avoid the trap of perfectionism, perfection is an illusion.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:26:54]:
But focus on consistent progress and be passion driven. Have a real passion for what you are doing. In all three examples I gave you Richard Branson, Steve Jobs, Freddie Mercury and the rest of the band Queen, they were all massively passionate about what they were doing, really enjoyed what they’re doing. Turn that passion into a fuel which drives you. Overachievers don’t succeed because they work the hardest of everyone. They succeed because they are passionate about what they do. So when you love your work, when you really love your work, the effort is exciting rather than exhausting. You still need to take breaks, you still need to rest, absolutely rest, recovery.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:27:43]:
But that passion will drive you through so much more powerfully, especially when you hit problems, when you hit obstacles, when you hit record companies saying, no, we are absolutely not releasing that single. That passion meant that single did get released and it became a massive hit. Enjoy the journey. Don’t focus too much on the destination. Yes, it’s nice to know your destination, but enjoy the journey, enjoy the process. Really get the most out of it along the way. Because the more you enjoy what you’re doing on the journey, the more you’re going to get out of it. The more you’re going to create, the more you are going to overachieve.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:28:32]:
Just leave you with some pitfalls to avoid with overachievement. Don’t tie your worth to your achievement. Yes, success is great. Success is fantastic. However, you are worth so much more than your accomplishments. Your value is not measured by, by what you achieve. So don’t. Don’t tie your worth into your achievement.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:28:58]:
If you don’t achieve things, that’s all right, you are still massively valuable. Set some boundaries to prevent burnout. Avoid taking on too much. Don’t try or avoid doing too much too soon, too quickly. Learn to say no. Learn to say no to protect your time, protect your health, so that you can continue to enjoy that journey and be passion driven far, far more. And hopefully most of us already know this one. But don’t see failure as a setback.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:29:39]:
Failure is the best teacher. Remember Steve Jobs was fired from his own company. Did he see that as a failure, as a set? Use that as a stepping stone to learn from that to grow himself, to evolve and become something even better. So that when he came back to Apple, he turned this company around and set it on its path for massive success and Surround yourself with supportive people. Even the greatest overachiever does not achieve it on their own. Build a network of people who challenge you, who encourage you, who support you. It could be colleagues, it could be other people with similar interests, could be coaches. Surround yourself with people who support you.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:30:30]:
And as I’ve said before, above all, enjoy the journey. Be passionate. Whatever you’re doing, be passionate about it. Really enjoy it. And that is how you will ultimately create your own levels of overachievement. You will certainly achieve a lot more than people who don’t have that passion, don’t have that drive, don’t have that enthusiasm, don’t have that grander vision. You’ll certainly achieve a lot more. And you too can enjoy the life being an overachiever.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:31:09]:
That’s it for this episode. I would love to know what you think. What’s your biggest takeaway from this? Are you an overachiever? Are you going to become an overachiever? Do you want to become an overachiever? Love to know your thoughts on this. Let’s get a conversation going. Add your comments wherever you see this. Drop me a line, let me know what you think. Give us a Like a comment. Share.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:31:34]:
Check out the other episodes remember on all the major podcast platforms. Or you can always find all the episodes@keithlakemorenoble.com show. Find us there. Check them all out and I will catch you in another episode very soon. And until then, take care, look after yourself and here’s to your massive passion fueled success. You’ve been listening to the Keith Blakemore-Noble Radio Show. To find out more, visit KeithBlakemorNoble.com