If jealousy is a disease, aspiration is its etiology. And boy, am I sick. Starting to work a big girl job recently has made me realize a lot of things about myself, but a main one I’m learning is how oblivious I can be sometimes to my own character. Basically, I’ve realized that a lot of my standards for excellence don’t grow and evolve with me, and so I’m stuck working towards these lofty goals that I don’t actually care about anymore. If you can relate to this at all, please bear with me while I explain further.
Growing up, I was the kind of kid who loved school. I found pride in being academically successful and I spent all my spare time reading and researching, always looking for a new hobby or skill I could try to excel at. In short, I was an annoying, obnoxious nerd. But I was an obnoxious nerd with goals and dreams, starry eyed, full of hope and excitement for the future. That excitement could easily be transformed into motivation, which powered my many hobbies and extracurriculars, and pushed me to be dedicated to self-improvement.
This was great. This article is not written to deny that, or say having high standards for self improvement is all bad. However, in my experience, for whatever reason, that excitement and drive faded as I got older. Maybe it was high school stress, or the realization that there were not enough hours in the day to do everything I wanted to do. It could have been having a friend group that I started to want to spend time socializing with rather than only focusing on myself. Or possibly the COVID quarantine getting me in the habit of being in bed too frequently. It could have been any number of things, but I think the reason doesn’t really matter. At the end of the day, the facts are the facts: adult me does not have the same bright-eyed motivation that I did as a kid. That is not the happiest thought in the world, but it’s also just reality. And given the multitude of articles, one can easily find by searching “Gifted Kid Burnout Syndrome”, I think I’m not the only one faced with this.
Now, I’m writing this article as a twenty one year old who has only just started to accept the above statement. But now that I have, I’ve realized that it’s not entirely a bad thing. In my first few university years, I really struggled with this. When you were a kid, you thought you would have written a book by now. When you were a kid, you thought you would be in a world famous band by now. When you were a kid, you thought you would’ve found a cooler style and look by now. Thoughts like these were constant and frequent, and I would feel so sad about this loss, yet still feel completely unable to find the drive to do anything about it. And though as a twelve year old, lofty goals like world fame and picture perfect looks might motivate you to play music or join a sports team, hanging on to them as tightly as I was while coming into adulthood was incredibly unhealthy. Out of all the possible causes I mulled over as to why I might be burned out and unmotivated, I had failed to consider: What if having constant pressure on yourself to meet unrealistic, innumerable, incredibly difficult to achieve goals is the actual reason?
Thinking about it this way, I realized that I was an adult still obsessing over the wishes of a kid. Kids don’t know that the real world can be tiring. They don’t know that one person won’t realistically be able to be the best at every skill they try their hand at. Even though I know these things logically now, I still deep down am framing my success and happiness based on these levels of excellence that only a child could dream up. Realistically, I will never be a gold-star athlete AND musician AND author AND… But because all of these seemed attainable when I was setting goals early on, I’m subconsciously striving for all of them. So, I’m in a constant state of disappointment, too demoralized to attempt at excellence in ANY field. Then there’s the jealousy, the brutal comparison to millions of people, because if you look at anyone for long enough, you can always find at least one thing that they are better at than you are.
These dreams don’t stem from nothing, though. Yes, I’ve realized that I need to let some of them go and spend time getting to know what I really want to focus on and setting attainable goals to strive for, rather than the impossible ones. However, at the root of wanting to be an author is my love of writing. At the root of wanting to be a musician is my love of music. At the root of wanting to excel academically is my love of learning. Reaching superstardom because of these activities might never happen. But you can always set goals just as a way to keep activities such as these in your life. For me, I took a long hard look at what hobbies I want to have just because I enjoy them, and which ones I want to work towards as long-term aspirations. I really like volleyball, so I joined a recreational team, and that’s good enough for me. Whereas with my writing, I want to dedicate lots of time towards improvement and success, and I still have aspirations and goals I see in my future to work towards.
All in all, the realization that adjusting my goals as I grow and realize what I need, what is attainable, and what really makes me happy, was a big wake up call. It allowed me to relax the white knuckle grip I had on my idea of excellence, and redefine success, letting some of my more distracting goals go. I now look at success in a way that isn’t so impossible that it makes me give up altogether. It allows me to put less pressure on having everything figured out, and take time to smell the roses. You can’t enjoy life if you are constantly dissatisfied with your own growth. And we all need to learn to be a little easier on ourselves! At least, I know I definitely will try to, and I hope you do too!