16 Brutal Life Lessons for Ambitious People - Michael Smoak - #1083

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
I have a hard time celebrating my achievements, because in my mind, it was my obligation to achieve it.

**Michael Smoak** (0:06)
The dilemma of the high achiever. I know you don't struggle with this at all. I know this truly.

**Chris Williamson** (0:11)
Game recognizes game, as they say.

**Michael Smoak** (0:13)
Yes, yes. All from a place of deep wounds and the desire to be adequate and enough.

**Chris Williamson** (0:17)
Yeah.

**Michael Smoak** (0:18)
I have a hard time celebrating my achievements and wins because it was in my mind. In my mind, it was my obligation to achieve them. And not only that, I think the group of people we hang out with, you hang out with, I hang out with, makes the exceptional seem extremely normal. I was having a conversation the other day with a friend who both of us had long runs. And I was running 16, he was running 20 And there was a time a couple of years ago where you couldn't have paid me thousands of dollars to do anything but drive 16 miles. And the fact of the matter is the average person thinks that's crazy. And there was a time where I was extremely proud of that. I remember running my first 10 miles. I remember where I was. I remember what I was doing. It was sunny. We were in Atlanta on the Beltline. And I remember when it hit 10 and I hit stop on the Apple Watch. And I went, holy shit. I just ran 10 miles. And then now it's just it's just a normal. And the carrot keeps moving for the high achiever. So I think the battle has now become learning to be content in the things that we achieve. You know, this was this was a goal of mine. Sitting down with you and being on this podcast, I've listened to it for years. And it's incredible to be in it with you right now. It's truly an honor because you can interview anybody in the world. And yet here I sit.
And so, what is the line between sitting in the pride and the humility and the graciousness and gratitude of the achievement and then moving the needle? I think you alluded to this in an episode you did a while ago talking about how you forgot to celebrate the wins along the way, which led to an inevitable case of burnout. And when we were here at the podcast, at the Four Way Podcast the other day with Sean and George, we talked about the importance of romanticizing every single thing in your life. So that way, when the big achievement comes, it doesn't feel like an obligation, it feels like a victory and you can truly sit in it before you move on to the next thing.

**Chris Williamson** (2:01)
It's strange, I think people that have high standards assume that they should always win, they should always succeed. And that turns success from a cause for celebration into the minimum level of acceptable performance. Success simply becomes what's expected of you, and anything less than success would be a failure. And yeah, it's the habituation that we see, hedonic adaptation, people talk about it for, you buy a new car and it's all exciting, and then pretty quickly you get used to it. You move into a new house, you're thinking about it for so long, and you were looking on Zoopla and Rightmove, and you were comparing it, and this is what we're going. And then it's just the place that you put your shoes at the end of the day, after a while. But a much more sort of pernicious place for this is in personal growth, it's in your own capacity.
So, previously, your old PR that you celebrated at the time is now a warm-up set. And the same thing goes for the status that you have, and your precision with the way that you do your art form, the speed at which you can complete a particular task, whether you're a salesperson or you manage a retail store, or you write a blog or whatever, you want to permanently be pushing the limits. And as you raise the bar, that means that you will always feel like you suck because your standards continually outstrip your ability to deliver them. And that's good in some ways, because it keeps forcing you to progress. But it does mean that you live in this gap, right? You don't live in the game, the comparison between where you are and where you are, you live in the gap between where you are and where you want to be. That's not where you could be, because sometimes you can want to be further than where you could be. And I told you that story about Alexander the Great, which is how we read the quote of Alexander saying, and Alexander wept, for he saw there were no more worlds to conquer, as his ambition being able to outstrip reality's ability to challenge him. Oh, he was bigger than the world, and he reached the edge of it and couldn't keep going, but would have done. But that's not the actual quote. The actual quote is him realizing that there are infinite worlds, and he hasn't even yet become the Lord of One. So he's crying at how puny and miniscule his accomplishments are. And I think that that's actually much closer to how we all feel. Like who has ever reached the edge of their ambition? Their ambition continues to outstrip it. You're right. If you raise your standards, you regularly disparage your accomplishments, even in the process of them. And there's a John Bellion song, Why, with Luke Combs, and in it he says, if the higher I climb is the further I fall, then why love anything at all? He's talking about opening up to someone, but I think the same thing works for just hard charging and overachieving. Why, if I permanently overachieve, then eventually I might get there, but you never arrive.