When Success Brings You Loneliness
Once you’ve done everything you set out to do, what happens next?
My dad likes to tell people that, if given the choice between reading a book or running a mile, I, his eldest daughter, would choose to do both.
He’s not wrong. To a fault, I’ve always been an obsessive overachiever. As a young kid, I scribbled out a list labeled “goals in life” on a scrap of notebook paper. I used to crush elementary school fundraising challenges; as an adult, I kept working from my hospital bed while in labor with my fourth baby, intent on hitting the earnings target I’d set for myself for the year.
I say this not to brag, but to talk about a peculiar thing that happened recently; that is, after years of being propelled by a singular focus on my own goals, I accomplished everything I’d been trying to accomplish and I realized I was miserable.
I’d spent years working toward my major goals: publishing a book, running a half-marathon, buying a house. But with all those behind me, I found myself adrift in a strange sort of aimless malaise. I didn’t know what to do with myself.
As it turns out, what I experienced is pretty common among overachievers. Melody Wilding, a performance coach and professor of human behavior at Hunter College in New York City, says she…
