You hit the target, and by evening it had become the least you could have done. You got the degree, the title, the house, and after each one you named a bigger one. Friends tell you to look at how far you have come. You look, and it does not add up to enough. It's never enough.
Wanting to do better is not a problem. This page is about a measure that moves every time you reach it.
01
What you do with what you've done
Notice what happens to a result once you have it.
It gets discounted. It was luck, or it was easy, or anyone could have. It gets compared with something larger. Then it becomes the least you expect of yourself, and you start again from there.
You may find it hard to say what enough would be. If someone asked for a number, you would not have one.
People call this high standards, or being hard on yourself. The voice says I'm not working hard enough. So I'm always working.
It can cost you rest, since rest has to wait for enough and enough does not arrive. The people close to you may stop offering praise, having seen where it goes.
02
What the moving measure may be protecting
Enough is always enough for something. The something may differ.
"If I'm not producing, I don't know who I am."
The measure may be what you make. Under Output, no amount settles it, because the worth is in the producing and the producing has to go on.
Read about Output →"I'm still working for someone who may not even be watching anymore."
The measure may be one person. Under Approval, the amount was never the issue. What is missing may be one particular response. Early on, one person told me I wasn't the smart one and wouldn't make it. I've been proving them wrong ever since.
Read about Approval →Those are two of several. Right, where the fear is that if you are wrong about this, what else are you wrong about, can also keep a person from calling anything finished. And it may be no rule.
03
What is under the rule
Under Output, the fear may be that without achievement you don't matter. What would answer it is worth that doesn't require performance.
Under Approval, the fear may be that without their verdict you don't know what you are worth. What would answer it is an internal measure that doesn't require ratification.
Doing more answers neither. Under the first, more is the habit itself. Under the second, more goes to someone who may not be counting.
04
One question that separates them
If nobody ever found out you'd done it, would you still have done it?
Yes, and you still couldn't stop, is the Output answer. If the point drains out of it, that is the Approval answer.
If you can't say, or it differs from one thing to the next, there is not enough to tell. That counts as an answer.
Some of this is just ambition. A person can want more, work for it, and rest without guilt along the way. Effort alone is not the Output rule. What tells you more is what happens when the producing stops.
The question is doing subtraction. It does not prove a rule. It removes one, when the answer is clear.
05
One thing to try this week
Write one sentence that begins It would be enough if.
Finish it honestly, even if the ending surprises you.
Then look at what you wrote. See whether it names an amount, or a person.
What happens right after a result comes in is on I Feel Empty After Achieving Something.