Our Story - From Toxic Achievement To Radical Wholeness

Toxic Achievement pollutes our motivation and drives with shame and loneliness. In this talk, David Young and Sarah Oben describe the features of Toxic Achievement and how it impacted their individual lives. They each share about their journey and how it led to the development of their course called Radical Wholeness.

Transcript

I couldn't make my life work.

I was my own worst critic.

I devoured self-help books.

I poured over personal development.

I felt ashamed of anything that wasn't positive in me.

I thought that whoever I'd want to be with wouldn't want to be with me.

I had friends and people who loved me and still felt alone.

I received so much praise for my work,

But I felt insecure.

I was motivated,

Driven,

And successful,

But never really present.

I knew I was accomplished,

Talented,

And capable,

But I wasn't happy.

Eventually I couldn't keep it all together,

And I lost everything I really cared about.

I became exhausted and couldn't keep going that way.

We found another way.

We found another way.

Listen to our story.

Listen to our story of how we began our journey from toxic achievement to radical wholeness.

Hi,

My name is David.

Hi,

My name is Sarah,

And we want to welcome you to Radical Wholeness.

Radical wholeness is about discovering a better way to fuel our lives and to experience the results that we want.

It's about metaphorically transitioning from fossil fuels to renewable energy.

It's more sustainable,

And it's also less draining,

And ultimately it's more fulfilling.

It's about going from what we call toxic achievement to what we've come to know as radical wholeness.

So,

I'm a coach,

A speaker,

And an entrepreneur,

And I lived a lot of my life in toxic achievement.

I hustled.

I almost never gave myself permission to rest,

And I always judged my self-worth based on how much value I was adding to other people's lives.

Even though it was exhausting,

I thought it was the best way to live my life,

But whenever I stopped for a moment,

However,

I just felt lonely.

I was pretending in my marriage,

And I didn't feel like I had permission to exist unless it was making a difference for other people.

So I just fought desperately to be a contribution just so I could justify being alive,

But the more I tried to earn it,

The more inauthentic I became,

And I ended up just settling for other people's approval.

I settled for temporary success and living this life where I knew I wasn't being myself.

I don't know if you've ever felt that way,

But it was like I was caught in this negative cycle that I couldn't get out of,

And I often didn't even notice I was inside of it.

Eventually I became depressed,

Resentful,

And ultimately I lost the success that I had built up and the parts of my life that were the most important to me.

I felt exhausted,

I felt afraid,

And I felt alone.

In my journey,

I've been a coach and a meditation instructor,

And for me,

Toxic achievement looked like judging myself.

I thought that there was something wrong with me,

And I had to fix it by achieving and accomplishing in the world.

In my career exploration and journey of finding what it was that I felt called to be in the world,

I looked at myself and judged myself for not knowing and not having it all together.

I looked at others in my life who seemed to have it all figured out,

And I compared myself to them,

Feeling guilty and weak and concluded that I had to muscle up and make my life work.

I became obsessive with figuring out the right way to go,

And my mind swirled with thoughts around how there was something wrong with me and I needed to be better.

I began to look outward for answers of what I should do and no longer trusted myself to know what it was that I wanted.

I forgot about the intention I held to be authentic and to experience joy.

Rather than feeling at peace with myself,

I began to prioritize looking good.

Deep down,

I felt deeply alone,

And most of all,

I missed myself.

I didn't know how to deal with emotions of frustration,

Fear,

And sadness,

And I aimed to shut them down to feel only positive and productive.

I felt like a shell of a person.

I could accept my light but not my dark,

And judged my self-worth based on how positive I was and how much I was growing.

I poured myself into personal growth and self-development and exhausted myself with striving to prove my worth and that I was a good person.

So I want to take a moment and share what Sarah and I mean when we say toxic achievement.

Toxic achievement isn't bad,

It's not wrong,

But it's a particular type of energy or motivation that we use unconsciously to fuel our lives,

And it has two aspects.

The first one is running from something,

And the second one is running to something.

So that can look like running from being single and alone,

Or running from being a financial failure,

Or running from being a mean person.

It can also look like running to something,

So that can be like frantically running to financial success or desperately running to a romantic relationship.

Even running to more personal growth is still running to.

So whether you're running from or you're running to,

This toxic achievement is characterized by running and an inner desperation.

It's a desperation to run from the things we don't want,

To run towards the things that we do want.

Even this desperation to save and serve is still desperation,

And this kind of desperation that characterizes toxic achievement,

It's this fundamental distrust in life.

Because on this state,

In some level,

On a deep level,

We don't trust the process that we're in,

And we don't trust ourselves.

And so as a result,

We end up being convinced on a subconscious level that life is a struggle.

We're afraid.

We're afraid that deep down,

It's all on me.

And if I'm being really honest,

We have this thought like,

I don't even know if I have what it takes to create the life that I want.

And so you end up with this quiet desperation,

And it's what so many of us live in.

It's certainly what I lived in,

And it's what drives us to keep running,

To run from or to run to something.

So this kind of achievement,

It's toxic because it actually drains you.

It's exhausting.

It makes it difficult for others to connect to the real you,

And it makes it difficult for you to know yourself.

And it creates this inability to be alone,

To be still,

And to be with yourself in silence.

That's why we say it's toxic.

When I think about how toxic achievement has shown up in my life,

I remember being on the phone with a mentor and it expressed to him that I was caught up in thoughts of what he and others I worked with thought about me.

I was convinced that they thought I wasn't effective.

As I listened to this mentor,

It dawned on me that my fear that something was wrong with me was affecting my feelings about myself more so than what others thought about me.

I saw that I was the one who hadn't been loving towards myself or seeing myself as worthy.

And I was using the fear as fuel.

There was a desperation to be perfect,

And I began to see that my desperation to be perfect was toxic.

So for me,

It looked like I was measuring my value by how much I was serving or how much I was growing.

And in my world,

That means being more grateful,

More kind,

More forgiving,

And more inspiring.

So I just devoured personal growth and self-help books.

I poured over books on philosophy and spirituality to find out how I could become better.

But the thing that I didn't notice in the background is that I was still running to something.

And there was a sense of desperation underneath that running,

Underneath that motivation to grow.

I was afraid that I could not become the person that I wanted to be,

No matter how much I tried.

And I was afraid that it was all up to me,

And I honestly didn't know if I was capable of doing it all.

And that thought terrified me.

And so I unknowingly used that fear to fuel my life.

But the thing is,

As long as I kept hustling,

I barely noticed.

I barely noticed how that kind of toxic achievement didn't even serve me.

Instead,

The only thing I noticed is how driven I was.

Driven to become the best dad,

Best valued friend,

Inspiring speaker,

Successful business person,

A kind husband,

Or the most spiritual person.

And maybe the only thing I would notice is that I felt ashamed of anything that wasn't positive in myself.

I wanted to optimize who I could be instead of being who I was.

And so I avoided feeling uncomfortable emotions.

I avoided being truly alone with myself in silence.

And I lost myself in success and personal growth and helping others,

Even though it was stressful,

Even though it took a lot from me.

And so I became more seemingly perfect,

But less real.

And I did experience more results,

But less joy.

And eventually I just burned out.

Having experienced the unworkability of toxic achievement firsthand,

We longed for a better way.

We asked ourselves questions like,

Am I ever going to get to a place of consistent,

Stable joy?

Am I ever going to get my life the way that I want it to be?

Can I be genuinely filled and not need my career,

My relationship,

Or my identity to tell me how valuable I really am?

We've been discovering a better way.

A way to break free from the running from and running to of toxic achievement.

A way to have peace,

Fulfillment,

And joy while still being true to yourself.

And it's an honor to be able to share it with you.

We call it radical wholeness,

And we invite you on a journey to master this practice together with us.

In radical wholeness,

We don't chase our dreams in the hope that we can finally feel whole and love our lives when we get there.

Instead,

We focus on loving ourselves first and experiencing wholeness.

And from that place,

We found that the life of our dreams naturally unfolds.

When we bring radical wholeness to the various aspects of our lives,

Especially the challenging ones,

It changes everything.

It creates ease.

It gives you space to forgive and to forgive yourself.

It opens the way for you to receive what you really want.

It allows you to be able to feel sadness,

Anger,

Or fear without hurting yourself and others around you.

It frees you to experience your life fully and to love and be loved.

It's a peace,

A joy,

And a power that lasts.

We are honored to journey with you,

And we look forward to seeing you in the course.

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