Achievement & Anxiety

I just discussed with my manager recently about strength and growth area, goals and career progression. I put some thoughts (and self evaluation) into this and I want to share some of my “analysis” on this topic, as it is directly related to my weaknesses.

I will be honest: I do believe I have somewhat of a big ego combined with over confidence. I hope it doesn’t came out as much in the form of bragging, i.e externally, but I know it impacts me in more than one way internally. Here’s an example scenario: whenever I see some folks who had achieved more than I did, whether it was going to a better school, having a higher title at jobs, or even having the time to travel and experience places I haven’t been, my defense mechanism always immediately kick in. Consciously or sub-consciously, I spiraled my thoughts into all the gap between me and them, and what I would need to do to get there. Of course, as a side effect, there is a feeling jealousy (or more commonly known as GATO) toward them as well.

For the longest time, I mistook this as the source to my motivation, credited it to many of my achievements. Along with it, I artificially gave myself a constant sense of anxiety and pressure, which make me generally feel dissatisfied and subsequently, feeling unfulfilled with my life. Maybe I do thrive under pressure and anxiousness, but here are also other things to consider:

• Is it a really fair comparison between the two of you? Often times, people usually understate the impact of things they mostly can’t control (i.e their family heritages, personal trauma, etc). Most of the time, no matter how similar it looks, like you went to the same school or you are the same age, you are most likely to compare apple to maybe oranges or even a rabbit
• Are you implying you have nothing to learn from someone did not get to where you are or take longer time to get to where you are? My current manager was an engineering director in a well known bank and he took a paycut to become a SDM (by choice) with the same org level with me. From hindsight, this looks like a demotion but from what I can tell, he is very happy with it along with all the challenges he has faced thus far with our project (and as you can tell, I do learn a lot of his experience)

I think all of this stem from two underlying root causes: (1) The long lasting impact of my parents’ “con nhà người ta” philosophy and (2) A general public’s unhealthy favor of result-driven personality. Here is the kicker: maybe this did help me in the past but now, it caused more harm that help, and I think I might have spent too much time agonizing over it rather than give brain space to actually improving myself in a more meaningful and effective way.

Unlike other posts, I don’t have a solution to solve this struggle yet. I don’t think it will be an immediate flip a switch and solve neither. This is one of my key weaknesses and I want to put it down somewhere so every now and then, I can go back and evaluate. I guess the first step of fixing something is to be aware of it first.