How to Avoid Success From Becoming Self-Destructive

Oct 12, 2021

How do you feel about yourself when you don’t succeed at something?

How do you feel about yourself when you fail to reach your goal? 

Do you define your identity, self-worth, and value based on your results?

 

For example, do you self-identify with being of value and worthy only once you succeed at something? Do you beat yourself up if you fail to accomplish something?

 

A ‘success mindset’ can be very helpful in our ability to achieve, but if we become dependent on success for our self-worth…it can go from helpful to hindering our effectiveness and fulfillment.

 

Don’t beat yourself up when you don’t succeed at something!! Don’t go down the self-destructive mindset of becoming dependent upon success to have a sense of worth and value.

 

I’ve experienced this self-destructive success mindset before. I only saw myself as accepted and validated once I accomplished something…and if I didn’t, I would feel really bad about myself. I needed to succeed primarily to MAKE ME FEEL BETTER ABOUT ME!!

 

Many of us are striving to achieve something to help us have a sense of value, worth and significance…feel validated. Often times it is success!! Achievement!! Once we achieve something or succeed at something it brings us a sense of worth and value as a man.

• Once I earn the money, I will have made it…I’ll feel better about myself
• Once I lose the weight, I will have made it…I’ll feel better about myself
• Once I launch that next project……I’ll feel better about myself
• Once I succeed at the next thing……I’ll feel better about myself

 

We become dependent on success and achievement to validate us…to feel worthy…to feel valuable.

 

Definition of dependence: relying on or being controlled by someone or something else

A synonym for dependence is…addiction! We often rely and become controlled by success…it becomes an addiction.

 

The self-destructive success mindset poses a challenge in 2 ways:

1. When you don’t achieve…you feel inadequate. Because your value is tied directly to your success
2. No amount of success ever becomes enough. Just like any addiction…what satisfied before, won’t continue to satisfy. Now it becomes a viscous cycle of shame and guilt and feeling less than, because of a constant chase for something you feel you need but can’t ever get to.

 

When we become dependent on something external from us (success, money, titles, what others say, etc.)…aka things we cannot control…to provide validation and fulfillment, we set up an addictive relationship with whatever the outcome is that we want.

• For example:
  • Money
  • Titles
  • Status

 

Here’s a good way to check if you may be affected from the self-destructive success mindset. Ask yourself these questions:

 

• “How would you feel about yourself if success in your career or business completely stopped?”
• “How have you felt about yourself in the past whenever you failed to accomplish a goal?” Do you take it really hard? Beat yourself up?
• “Would you feel inadequate? Like a failure?”

 

 

It’s ok to feel disappointed, but you can’t stay in those emotions. You can’t turn your mistakes and failures into what defines you.

 

How do you avoid becoming dependent on success for your validation?

 

3 things to understand:

 

1. Your validation MUST come from INTERNAL, not EXTERNAL from you!
   1. You cannot completely control external circumstances
   2. If you rely on external circumstances to define you, then your emotions and self-worth will be defined by things you cannot fully control
   3. You will become your mistakes
      1. For example: If you failed as a business owner, you cannot define yourself as a person who’s not good at business. It was simply a mistake to learn from…not to self-identify with
   4. Your validation MUST come from who God says you are!
      1. This is validation from INTERNAL, not EXTERNAL
      2. This validation doesn’t change. This validation is consistent.
      3. This validation is the truth of who you are
         1. You are fearfully and wonderfully made
         2. You are made in the image and likeness of God

• You are more than a conqueror

3. You will safely experience more success once you depend on your identity in God, than your identity in yourself by your results.

 

Once you see yourself as God sees you…WATCH OUT!!

Similar to basketball, a mistake is no more than a missed shot. Just because Steph Curry misses a shot, he doesn’t self-identify himself as a bad shooter...it’s simply a missed shot. A missed shot doesn’t define who he is as a basketball player. Part of why he’s a good shooter is because he believes himself to be before he ever picks up a ball.

 

Once you see yourself as God sees you, you won’t be a slave to time and circumstances…you’ll rest in the inevitability of your results, because you’ll know who you are…an ELITE MAN!

 

If you need help, book a 1:1 Discovery Call with me at https://drbradmd.com

Talk to you soon,

Dr. Brad