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Why You Feel Unsuccessful Even After You Achieve Your Goals?
You got the promotion. You hit your targets. Your LinkedIn profile looks impressive.
Yet, somehow, it feels like you are not good enough.
A survey conducted in the UK in 2019 found that approximately 53% of people feel like a failure despite multiple achievements.
📋 In This Article
You Cannot Achieve Your Way to Self-Worth
When we tie our sense of self to how productive we are or how much we achieve, we keep raising our bar to achieve more and more the next time. This keeps us stuck on a never-ending treadmill, also known as the hedonistic treadmill.
The Cycle
Achieve → Feel Good (briefly) → Chase Next Goal → Repeat
The Belief
“I am only valuable if I succeed”
The Comparison Trap and Validation Seeking
🔄 The Comparison Trap
No matter what we do, there is always someone on the other side with bigger accomplishments. This comparison trap keeps us exhausted because no matter how much we achieve, there is always someone who has achieved more.
We don’t compete against others; we compete with the distorted image of “a successful person” that does not actually exist.
✓ Validation Seeking
When we depend on external praise to feel good about ourselves, we let others control our self-worth. We blame ourselves for silence and celebrate based on compliments.
⚠️ The Problem: Our self-worth correlates directly with the praises we receive, not our actual value.
The Roots of Professional Self-Doubt
For many of us, a deep-seated belief that we are not good enough is often formed in childhood. This can develop in a few ways:
Critical Parents
Made nothing feel good enough
High Standards
Impossible to meet expectations
Unrecognized Effort
Effort wasn’t recognized or rewarded
This is exactly where imposter syndrome comes in: Most of us experience the feeling that we don’t deserve what we have achieved, or even worse, that we have fooled people into thinking we are competent when we are actually not.
The Difference Between Failing and Being a Failure
FAILING
An event that happens when we cannot do something the way it needs to be done.
BEING A FAILURE
An identity that we do not have to live by.
The problem: Many of us transfer event failure to identity failure. We mess up a project, and suddenly we’re questioning our entire career path.
✨ Healing self-doubt starts with separating what you do from who you are.
Building Self-Worth That Actually Lasts
Okay, so how do you break this cycle? Here are some tips that actually work:
1. Shift from Achievement to Values
Instead of asking “What did I achieve today?”, ask “Did I work in sync with my values today?” When you measure yourself by how you show up, not just what you produce, your self-worth becomes more stable.
2. Compare Less
Unfollowing accounts that make you feel unworthy, limiting LinkedIn use, or simply noticing self-doubt thoughts can help reduce comparison and allow self-worth to grow.
3. Build Self-Validation
Start asking yourself how YOU feel about your work before checking for external feedback. Your opinion matters too.
4. Challenge Old Beliefs
When that “not good enough” voice speaks up, get curious. Where did this belief come from? Is it actually true?
