Aligned Achievement
By Maki Moussavi
Aligned AchievementJan 30, 2023
Is it a dark night of the soul? How to recognize and deal with it.
*This podcast has been renamed to Aligned Achievement! Just an FYI that the intro reflects the previous name.
What is a dark night of the soul? It can be anything that triggers an extremely difficult time in your life, like the loss of a job, a relationship, an illness, etc. It can also be a very internal process, like having the realization that something in your life isn't what you'd hoped or worked for, a sense that something is off that feels heavy, and comes with a lack of clarity or confusion about how to course correct.
Often, even if it's one specific area of life that's calling your attention to the fact that something is off, the challenges are not confined to that area. In other words, that one area is serving as a catalyst for you to tune in and pay attention to what's happening in your life holistically.
It's normal to experience a dark night of the soul, but sometimes it sneaks up on you. Learn what signs to look for and how to handle it when it shows up in your life. If you're ready to dig deeper, check out my book, The High Achiever's Guide, and my blog for further exploration of the conditioning challenges that high achievers face and what to do about them.
Resolutions suck but priorities rule - how to put your energy where it matters
*This podcast has been renamed to Aligned Achievement! Just an FYI that the intro reflects the previous name.
It's the time of year when you start to consider what comes next, but resolutions aren't for everyone. Sometimes they're too big, try to do much, or cyclically end up as a resolution, only to be dropped soon after the year begins.
If resolutions feel like too much pressure or not a good use of time, you can take an honest, hard look at your priorities instead and resolve (ha!) to make 2024 the year you allow your priorities to lead where you put your energy.
This may sound like a boring no-brainer, but it can actually be difficult to discern the difference between what you prioritize and put energy into versus your real priorities.
There are times when more effort doesn't yield different or better results. Now is the time to take advantage of what you learned last year and try an approach that will keep you aligned with what matters to you most. For more personal development content like this, please check out my book, The High Achiever's Guide, and blog!
What about your friends? The power groups have in settling for less.
Small note - I had some editing challenges so there's no intro for this episode! I hope you enjoy this one.
This episodes covers the ways in which your social groups (professional and personal) can have a profound impact on your trajectory. It's natural for us to gather and socialize, but it's important to ensure that what you're getting from those interactions supports your growth rather than stagnation.
Listen for the major things to be aware of and suggestions for how to handle tendencies that limit your potential.
Why taking action before you're ready is powerful
*This podcast has been renamed to Aligned Achievement! Just an FYI that the intro reflects the previous name.
Do you feel as if you're always getting ready to be ready?
Do you overthink, overanalyze and generally try to "perfect" something before you take action?
It's tempting to think you must have every detail, answer, and concern addressed before you initiate something new, but the reality is that this approach can be a form of self-sabotage that keeps you stagnant.
There are two main conditioning challenges to be aware of when you're stuck in the preparation phase or when battling analysis paralysis. This podcast episode explores these challenges with concrete examples and offers tools for overcoming the conditioning blocks that keep you spinning your wheels rather than moving forward.
The sneaky power of limiting beliefs and how to reprogram them
*This podcast has been renamed to Aligned Achievement! Just an FYI that the intro reflects the previous name.
Limiting beliefs have the power to keep you from moving forward in your life, often in ways that go undetected due to how deeply ingrained they can be. Learning to identify and take inventory of your specific limiting beliefs puts you back in the driver's seat rather than allowing fear and doubt to dictate the way you move through (or stay stuck!) in life.
Inside this episode:
- Understand what limiting beliefs are
- Learn the two main variations that cause trouble
- Hear examples of common limiting beliefs that high achievers struggle with
- Discover how to identify your beliefs and the techniques for defusing/reprogramming them
Check out my book, The High Achievers Guide, for in-depth discussion and exercises on this topic and others relevant my fellow achievement-oriented people out there.
Why knowing your sh*t and knowing your value aren't the same thing
*This podcast has been renamed to Aligned Achievement! Just an FYI that the intro reflects the previous name.
Understanding the difference between self-confidence (knowing your sh*t) and self-worth (knowing your value) is critical to your ability to show up in the world authentically.
As a Type A, high-achieving personality, you may be highly self-confident (and for good reason), but the sneaky part of self-confidence is that it involves a feedback loop of validation and recognition from others. While this is an important part of building appreciation of your abilities, it is *not* the same as having a fundamental sense of self-worth, which makes it possible - even likely - that despite being confident, your sense of your inherent value could use some work.
How waiting for the "right time" is a self-sabotaging trap
*This podcast has been renamed to Aligned Achievement! Just an FYI that the intro reflects the previous name.
Do you tell yourself that certain conditions need to be met before you can take steps toward a particular goal or intention? If you regularly engage in thinking like "When x occurs, then I'll do y," that's a red flag that you are potentially sabotaging yourself without being conscious of it.
High achieving individuals are conditioned to put work ahead of everything and make promises to themselves that eventually the time will be right to put energy and effort toward other priorities. This is actually not the case as your conditioning will keep you trapped in the cycle of keeping work in the ultimate position of priority, even when it's depleting and stressful to continue doing so. Perfectionist tendencies and fear of failure play a critical role in this cycle, as well, and it's important to identify whether those factors play a role so you can be aware and make different decisions in the moment when the opportunity arises.
How 3 illusions fueled by fear hold you back
*This podcast has been renamed to Aligned Achievement! Just an FYI that the intro reflects the previous name.
Fear is a commonly discussed topic in personal development (as it should be), but trite advice and clichés like "feel the fear and do it anyway!" dismiss the very real and important role it plays.
Fear is critical to our survival and for that reason needs to be taken seriously. It's key evolutionary purpose is to ensure we live to fight another day, However, for many of you listening, your survival needs are covered and it's thriving that's the challenge. In this episode, we will take a deeper look at the fear that comes with taking healthy risks, and how to assess and overcome fear in that context.
Topics covered:
- The role of the ego and why you need it
- The inevitability of fear
- Questions to ask yourself as you assess your fears
- The three illusions fueled by fear and how to shift your perspective on their meaning
4 common challenges high achievers struggle with
*This podcast has been renamed to Aligned Achievement! Just an FYI that the intro reflects the previous name.
When you're ready for a shift in your experience, the process of making change can be daunting. There are a lot of reasons for this, but one of the main reasons is that when we start to think about what needs to change, the list can be overwhelming. You get to thinking about work, your personal life, your health, your mental state, and it's like hot mess central where you have no freaking clue where to begin, or even HOW to begin.
The good news is that what feels like hundreds of different things boils down to handful of tendencies that you'll begin to see more clearly as you tune into one small thing at a time to address. It's through small changes that you can see massive results, but the key is to understand where your conditioning is working against you so you know specifically what needs to shift.
In order to make that easier, this episode discusses the 4 challenges common to success conditioning.
- Proving yourself
- People-pleasing
- Conforming/emulating
- Tying your value to what you earn
Conditioning in these areas can lead you to seek confirmation of your worth through external sources, but no amount of external validation can ever fill the internal void of not truly knowing your value.
Are you facing any of these challenges? Listen to gain clarity and tips for moving forward.
Why doing what you're told will suck the life out of you
*This podcast has been renamed to Aligned Achievement! Just an FYI that the intro reflects the previous name.
As a high achiever, it's easy to be stuck in your conditioning and listening to the voice inside you that tells you what you "should" be doing. When I had the personal recognition that much of my life was being driven by external expectations, it was eye-opening to realize that as contrary and cynical as I can be, I was basically doing what I was told. More accurately, I was doing what I'd been taught to do through success and achievement conditioning.
Well. F all of that. That's a one-way ticket to feeling stuck, trapped, and resigned in ways that suck the life out of you.
When you tell yourself what you "should" be doing, it's a red flag. It means:
- You're acting from a sense of duty and obligation
- You're getting ready to do something that is out of alignment with what you would choose to do
- Your conditioning is dictating what needs to happen next rather than you deciding from a place of clarity
This is a tricky place to operate from. On the one hand, you're prioritizing the needs and expectations of others above your own and you may get the quick payoff of making the other person (or system) happy. On the other hand, the more you do what you don't want to do, the more that thing you don't want to do is expected of you.
You can shift out of this energy relatively quickly by making baby steps in a different direction. If that resonates, this episode is for you.
How the fear of being "too much" keeps you stuck
*This podcast has been renamed to Aligned Achievement! Just an FYI that the intro reflects the previous name.
Do you ever worry that you're "too much"? That people will be put off by your opinion, how you show up, or even who you are?
Here's the thing about worrying you're too much and showing up in a muted way - it sucks. It just does. No one is moved by neutrality. In fact, neutrality is boring and we don't gravitate toward it. Consider something you love. Maybe it's a band, a type of music, a movie, whatever. Do you love it because it's middle of the road and everybody likes it? Of course not. In fact, it's highly likely you love it because it isn't those things, and it's equally likely others don't care for it at all.
Nothing is for everyone. Imagine how the world would look if the people that created the things we love decided "Oh, I would do that but someone may not like it therefore I should hide and not put it out there." It's not that those people don't consider the possibility of rejection. Of course they do.
But they don't let it stop them.
If you struggle to show up authentically because you're worried about how you'll be received, or if you've avoided creating something for the same reason, this episode is for you. Authenticity doesn't come with rainbows and sunshine. It's disruptive. It's polarizing. It's also incredibly mentally freeing and empowering.
Ready to show up for real?
Why traditional goal setting sucks and what to do instead
*This podcast has been renamed to Aligned Achievement! Just an FYI that the intro reflects the previous name.
Do you ever reach goals, feel flat and immediately start planning your next goal? Do the same goals go on and fall off your list in an endless, frustrating cycle?
If so, you're in the right place. Traditional goal-setting gets a lot of things wrong. This can be really confusing if you're a driven, Type A personality who's absolutely nailed the process of setting a goal and reaching it, because it can be hard to put your finger on *why* it's not satisfying or fulfilling, and why you have to keep dangling the next carrot in front of yourself in pursuit of that elusive element of satisfaction.
The way we're taught to pursue goals is very linear. You come up with your goal, the specific outcome you have in mind, then you reverse engineer the tasks and activities that will get you to that outcome. It's checklist oriented. Check the tasks of your list and boom - goal achieved. So this process works, right?
Technically, it works in that you get the outcome you had in mind. BUT, if that was all that mattered, you wouldn't be here.
What the traditional approach doesn't take into account is WHY you feel driven to achieve in the first place, HOW pursuing a given goal will impact your life, and WHAT achieving that goal will do for you.
The traditional approach is highly focused on measurable outcomes and based on a foundation that doesn't have real substance. It's no wonder then that achievement of goals can feel empty, even if you kick ass at the achievement part.
In this episode, we dive deeply into this topic and discuss:
- The details of why the traditional goal setting approach is one-dimensional and limited
- How to evaluate the way you're setting goals and what to consider
- The three I's of what's missing from the traditional approach
- The problem of magical thinking and how to identify whether it's an issue for your goal process
- Why repeatedly putting the same unaccomplished goals on your list is not harmless
Around the 11:30 mark, I encourage you to get out your journal and do some thought exercises to evaluate your process. Here are some prompts:
- How are you setting goals today?
- Evaluate how rote measurement (it has to be more/bigger than last year, for example) creeps in.
- Are you creating goals based on comparison to others, e.g. John did x, y, and z and was promoted, so if I do the same I will get a similar outcome.
- Are you looking for validation? If you accomplish said goal, will it mean you're good enough for...fill in the blank.
- Take a goal you have in mind now and ask yourself the following questions: How will pursuing this goal impact your life, for better or worse? What will achieving this goal do for you? Why does this goal matter? How do you want to feel upon achieving it?
If you're looking for more prompts to think deeply on this topic and others like it, check out my book, The High Achiever's Guide!
You can find more info at makimoussavi.com
You can be grateful and still want more
*This podcast has been renamed to Aligned Achievement! Just an FYI that the intro reflects the previous name.
Have you ever expressed a desire for more from life, only to be shot down (by yourself or others) because you should be grateful for what you have? If so, this episode is for you.
Gratitude is a powerful practice that can do wonders for your mental and emotional state. It can snap you out doom spirals of negative thought and rebalance your outlook so that you're able to see what's going right for you, even if there are things that could be better. However, misuse of gratitude can keep you in a state of resignation, stuck where you are rather than following your inner fire to elevate your experience. It can keep you in a place of comparison, where because you have more than others, it makes you feel wrong or guilty for wanting more than you already have. When you use gratitude to anesthetize yourself into being "fine" with where you are, that's dangerous to your well-being.
The practice of gratitude is a perfect example of how our conditioning can cut both ways. It can be highly supportive when used in an aligned way, and momentum-killing when used in a misaligned way. It also reveals the power of societal conditioning, where shame and guilt can be used to keep people small when your personal ambition is triggering to those around you.
If you'd like more content just like this, check out my book, The High Achiever's Guide.
Special note - thank you in advance for your patience as I get this content out into the world with more focus on content than perfection! I will continue to refine sound quality going forward and am so happy you're here for the message.
Introductory Episode
**This podcast has been renamed to Aligned Achievement, the podcast for growth-oriented, high-achieving individuals ready to initiate radical change in life and work. This episode is highly relevant to those looking for content related to the intersection between business, mindset, and spirituality.
This is the introductory episode of Musings of a High Achiever, the podcast for people who identify as type A, driven personalities who are interested in deepening their self-awareness. This episode discusses the conditioning that high achievers are susceptible to, the professional dissatisfaction that led Maki to go on a deep personal development journey, and how what she discovered along the way applies to other high achievers who want to release the burden of the expectations of others to live life on their own terms.
When you're ready for a change, you might feel crazy. Are you insane to want something different for your life when you have it good already? Nope. Success that's created based on someone else's expectations and not your own can never be truly fulfilling. The point of this first episode is not only to introduce you to the premise of the show, but also to give you permission to want something different. To see yourself reflected in someone else's experience in a way that is validating, and perhaps galvanizing. Are you ready to go deep?