How To Be A High Achiever Without Hating Yourself

You might be shocked to learn that many wealthy, high status, high achievers hate themselves.

It’s deep, toxic, shame and lack of self worth that pushes them to succeed.

Because they mistakenly believe that the new cars and the women and the money will make them feel good about themselves.

And for a brief period, money, status and sex does…

It just doesn’t last.

And so it becomes chasing the next achievement and living for the next conquest hoping that the next thing will be the one that makes you consistently happy…

But it doesn’t work that way.

If it did, celebrities would be the happiest people on the planet, yet many celebrities, with everything a man could want, succumb to dramatic interpersonal relationships and drug addictions.

I call this the Elvis example, where you achieve your wildest dreams and it’s still not enough to make you feel good. Where do you go from there? If you’re like Elvis you in drugs and food and your story ends in an early death.

But I want to tell you there’s a better way. You can still be a peak performer and pursue all the good things in life, yet you can be happy in the process – the key is state control and state control is the most important skill you can possibly master. Because your entire life is nothing more than a series of state changes – state being a combination of thoughts, feelings and sensations – your entire experience of life from birth to death is nothing more than a series of state changes.

And every person on this planet wants to be in a pleasant state as often and possible and a painful state as little as possible – anyone who disagrees is delusional or dumb. If there were a magic pill, without side effects, that made you feel blissfully happy every day, every person would take that pill. It’s a fact that every human desire and therefore every human action is a desire for either pleasure or a desire to avoid pain. Unfortunately many people are not self aware, and because of ignorance they haven’t mastered state control, and because of poor state management many people often do things that cause them pain instead of bring them pleasure.

In a rational world, 90% of what we would learn in school would be state control. That world would have very little crime because happy, self aware people don’t want to hurt other people, they want to share happiness and positivity.

But we don’t live in a rational world. We live in a world where many people couldn’t even tell you what their purpose is on this planet. Where many people don’t even realize that the pursuit of happiness is the most logical way to live and that structuring your life to be as consistently happy as possible only makes sense.

Living your whole life hating yourself outside of brief periods of happiness when you hit your goals is not a rational way to live. Chasing money and status as the sole source of happiness and self worth is a losing game. Defining your happiness and self worth by your bank account is a recipe for misery.

It’s not just irrational, it’s insane, playing the self hatred game is an insane game to play because it’s a game you can’t win. Because someone is always tougher or taller or wealthier or has a bigger c*ck. If you want to play the comparison game, and beat up on yourself because someone else is tougher or taller or stronger or makes more money, you’re always going to feel unworthy.

Taken to it’s logical extent, you can always find a way to feel unworthy no matter how successful you are. Unworthy because you’re not the UFC heavyweight champ, or because you don’t have a p*rnstar c*ck, or because you don’t have 160 billion dollars like Jeff Bezos.

Even when you become the best salesman in your office, and transition your sales skills into building an 8 figure business of your own, you’ll always find someone else who is doing better, someone else who makes you feel bad about what you’ve accomplished. As long as you don’t like yourself, and choose to feel bad about yourself becomes someone else is doing better, you’ll never be consistently happy, because someone is always doing better.

Someone always has a bigger private jet, or bigger biceps, or a bigger bank account.

But it doesn’t have to be that way, all you have to do is stop agreeing to play a losing game, it’s that simple.When you were a teenager, you dreamed about money, and cars, and women and you thought when you got those things that you’d be happy. That’s the key word HAPPINESS…

But at some point along the way you lost site of the forest for the trees and your priorities became purely about conquest at the expense of happiness. Money and status and women are tools for happiness, NOT the end goal, it’s THE FEELING of consistent happiness that you really want, SO START THERE.

It’s true that having money and success and the ability to have relationships with women does make it easier to be happier, but those things do not make you happy in and of themselves. They are merely tools. But if without state management, all your achievements will be nothing more than Pyrrhic victories.

Choose to feel good about yourself, choose positivity, choose to be in the best state available at all times as your PRIMARY PRIORITY IN LIFE. Stop sacrificing your happiness because you didn’t achieve the arbitrary goal you set for yourself.

Don’t get me wrong, being a peak performer is great, setting goals is great, challenging yourself is great but beating yourself up is not. You can go for all the good things in life, and for fulfilling your potential, without beating up on yourself. It’s as simple as choosing not to indulge negative thoughts and dialogue, and choosing to create a positive narrative for yourself.

Imagine your life as a movie and you’re the narrator, and throughout the whole moving you’re constantly telling yourself kind things, and picking yourself back up, and motivating yourself and you have a whole chorus of backup singers behind you and inspirational music – because it’s your movie and you can create whatever kind of narrative you want. And the narrative of “I’m garbage because someone else is more successful than me” doesn’t make any sense.

The problem is not having high standards and hitting goals, the problem is telling yourself you’re garbage and unworthy until you hit your goals. And when you hit those goals only allowing yourself to be happy for a month or a week or a day until you determine you’re still not good enough until you hit the next thing.

Money, status and women are tools for happiness, they don’t solve the problem of self hatred. Choosing not to hate yourself solves that problem. Choosing to ruthlessly manage your state and refuse to indulge in sadness, anger or self loathing solves the problem. Choosing to be grateful for what you have and excited about all the new opportunities, goals and adventures in your future solves the problem. Choosing to love yourself solves the problem.

Choosing to do all those things right now is what you need to do, and choosing to reframe negative thoughts all day, every day is what you need to do. And if you lost yesterday, choosing not to beat yourself up over it today is the right move. Choose to be a peak performer, and a high achiever, but also choose to enjoy your life, and looking forward to hitting your goals, and enjoy hitting your goals.

Choosing to set a target 3 years in the future and telling yourself you’re sh*t until you hit that target makes no f*cking sense. Telling yourself you’re sh*t because you missed revenue targets last month is not the way either. In fact, telling yourself you’re sh*t is never a good frame – because it means you’re sacrificing your state because some event happened.

Choosing to hate yourself until x happens, and either failing at hitting x and being miserable, or hitting x being happy for a brief period in time only to revert back to misery is an insane way to live. Because the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting a different result.

Happiness is a skill, in fact it’s the most important skill, and like all skills it takes practice. You will not magically become happy 5 years from now because you made more money or got more women if you spend the next 5 years neglecting that skill.

Using self hatred as fuel to hit some arbitrary goal that will briefly allow you to choose not to hate yourself for a brief period of time is not the way to live. The way to live is to choose to be in the best state available at all times regardless of circumstance. The man you want to be is cheerful and charming so use everything in your power to be that guy at all times.

I’m not saying don’t aim for outward achievements, I’m all for 100% aiming to fulfill your potential, and for being a peak performer, I’m saying don’t hate yourself on the way to hitting your goals because it’s f*cking insane. Instead make your beliefs your serve you, be happy and use your achievements and future goals as tools to increase your happiness.

If you’re going to compare yourself to people, compare yourself to your old self or to people you grew up with or to people who don’t have the opportunities that you’ve had and you’ll find yourself feeling grateful for what you have. Millions of people have aids and cancer and diabetes or pickup garbage, wade through sewers or have to work in factories to survive – just the fact that you don’t is worthy of being grateful for.

Being miserable and self hating is the same as being ungrateful, not only does it hurt you, but you hurt everyone around you because no one wants to have to be around your miserable ass – being ungrateful is selfish.

When you see people doing better then you in your industry, be happy for that too, because you know that more success and more money is available too, and they’ve already blazed the trail and made the mistakes for you, so you get to model their success. Every scenario can be framed as a win, and as moving forward and as positive as long as you commit to positivity.

Hating yourself is a choice, and a terrible choice to make, because nobody can make you feel anything, every emotion you’ve ever felt has been your choice, so stop choosing to feel bad about yourself, regardless of whatever arbitrary event happened.

Punishing yourself psychologically for 3 days because you missed target makes about as much sense as jabbing a knife through your leg for 3 days as physical punishment, it’s that insane. Most people are aware enough not to physically torture themselves because some event happened or because they made some mistake, so don’t torture yourself psychologically either because it’s just as insane.

A better way to live is to make happiness your primary priority, train yourself to constantly monitor your state, and change your focus whenever you’re feeling bad. Gratitude works great, so does throwing yourself into your work, and the king of all state changes is physical activity, the easiest way to change your thoughts is to change your physical stage. When you do an hour of hot yoga, its impossible not to feel 15% better. When you do a hard workout of heavy weights, cardio and follow that up by a steam or a long hot shower and then a cold shower, it’s impossible not to feel 15% better.

State control is the name of the game, self hatred, for whatever reason, or because of whatever external event happened is not, it’s insane. Having high standards is great, but not when you allow them to strangle you. High standards will help you have the body you want, and the lifestyle you want, and the girlfriend you want, and the income you want – but all those things are worthless when you use self hatred as fuel.

When you exist just to acquire things because you hate who you are, and the payoff only lasts a month or a week or a day before something happens that knocks you off the brief moment of happiness you had in a sea of misery…you’re playing the wrong game.

If you want to be as happy as possible as often as possible, which is the absolute most logical thing you can do with your life, you have to become a master of being aware of how your feeling and constantly choosing the positive, because positivity is the only logical path.

You have to be able to choose the positive even when things don’t go your way, and to love yourself regardless of whether you closed the deal, and sometimes you have to love yourself like your life depends on it, because for some people it does, depression kills millions of people a year in suicide, and suicide is always the end result of negative thinking.

Negative thinking taken to it’s logical conclusion is self hatred and suicide. Positive thinking taken to it’s logical conclusion is self love and love of life – it’s obvious what the right choice is and waging that daily battle against negativity is the most important thing you can do with your life.

By all means set high standards, fulfill your potential, be a peak performer, but don’t hate yourself in the process because it just doesn’t f*cking make sense. If you blow a deal or miss a workout out, definitely check yourself for a second, but don’t beat yourself up for 3 days and sacrifice state, just re commit to working harder and doing better next time.

And lastly if you’re a peak performer and want help on living a happier life, sign up for my peak performer’s coaching program and I’d be happy to custom-tailor a plan for you which will help you create the right self image and give you all the positive reframes and psychological strategies you need to live your best life.