Is Over Striving An Attempt to Correct a Troubled Past?

Achieving a lot sounds like a wonderful idea, but we should pause before envying over-achievers too much: they are likely to have been driven not just by enthusiasm and intrinsic interest, but also by a more desperate and poignant need to prove themselves to people (usually way back in childhood) whose love was painfully conditional.

Driven by an intense desire to prove themselves, overachievers are often doomed to fail, as they can never succeed in righting the past which lives on in their heads, by the relentless drive to achieve. Perhaps its time to stop achieving and take a journey back into the trauma of their past. The cure for overachievement lies in love and compassion. They deserve a place in the world just for being who they are, not what they achieve.