Your Greatest Achievement

Do you need to be constantly achieving to feel successful or good about yourself?

“What is your greatest achievement?”

Is one of the most challenging behavioural questions you can be asked during a job interview.  The common answers most interviewers get:

• My greatest professional achievement was completing my Bachelor's degree in 4 yes with a 3.8 GPA. I had no financial support from my family and had to work a full-time job while pursuing my Economics degree.
• Giving a great presentation at work.
• Beating sales targets.
• Training for and completing a marathon.
• Organising a successful charity event.
• Mentoring a co-worker or fellow student.

Even our curriculum vitae is a summary of achievements, so our potential employers know how good we are.

What do you feel when asked about your achievements?

Achievements by definition simply means: a thing done successfully with effort, skill, or courage.

Yet for many who are hyper achiever, goal getter this question might just have the opposite effects.  When you are constantly achieving, so much so that you don’t even realise how much you have achieved, it’s like from one target to another, like an inner monster who is always hunger, not for food but achievements and you hardly take time to celebrate any of your successes.

Sounds familiar?

Our society looks upon our achievements as necessary as if it’s what defined us and we wear it like a badge on us.

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment” Ralph Waldo Emerson, American transcendentalist, essayist, and author.

Being a high achiever is great, for you are generally driven, pragmatic, adaptable, goal oriented and capable of growing self and others to achieve that full potential.

This is also very much needed in our competitive corporate world as we need to show the results we are capable of. There is no denying to it (I came from the corporate world myself of over 2 decades).

Yet so much is riding on your performance – as if there is no choice but to be competitive.     You depend on that constant performance and achievement for self-respect and self validation.

In a recent conversation with a client who told me that she find herself not getting things done like the past where she is a goal getter, efficient, effective .  Although, she felt such a strong need to do the things she was supposed to do yet she find that she ended up doing something else and felt guilty about it.   Her motivation, enthusiasm eg going to gym instead of having a nice dinner seem to have gone. 

Where has that rational, efficient self gone to, this new self seem to be more relaxed and chill about things, so much so she felt guilty for she is not “on the toes” anymore and this must be wrong.

If you were this client of mine, how would you be feeling?  Guilty that you are not performing to your own mark/ standards?

As we dive deeper into the conversation, she reflected upon what was that difference. Her perspective of herself and situation has changed brought upon by  the pandemic where she learnt to be more empathetic towards herself and others.

In fact, this very new her has been ‘achieving even more’ – not from herself like the past but as a team. The ability to tab into her empathy power has been liberating for she no longer needs to hold that tight rein on others like before which she realised is not sustainable and the ability to relax and chill has made her a much understanding manager.   In fact, she loves her new self as she reflected – where she no longer needs the achievements to validate her self-worth. She no longer  needs to be the task master of herself and others but a human who has time to sit back and relax, who is more understanding, who is ok with less self achievements.

What is your biggest achievement ? 

For the greatest achievements is never what you got or have but who you really are! 

Are you guts enough to go and get that greatest achievement of yours?