A Better Way to Achieve
Photo by Andrej Lisakov via Unsplash.
If you're a high achiever, you've likely been conditioned to push, force, and make things happen. You use your personal will to produce in the world. You override your feelings all day long. (I say this because I've lived it!)
If pushing isn't your pattern and avoiding action is, keep reading. There's value for you too.
Here's the thing: pushing can produce fruitful results. No question. High achievers accomplish incredible things through sheer force of will. But it comes at a high cost.
Because fueling on intensity and adrenaline can only last so long. At some point, Life kicks in—through burnout, exhaustion, sickness, loss—and the override pattern stops working.
That's when most high achievers have a crisis of identity. They push harder, trying to force the old way to work again. They wallow where they are, feeling like failures. Or—they surrender and discover an even better way to achieve in the world. One not sourced from the mind, but from the heart.
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This came up so beautifully in The School for Humaning Well Office Hours recently. A student in the school—I'll call her L—shared that she's been experiencing something she called "boredom" and "spring fever."
She sees how much of her safety programming has been based on intensity, so when there isn't a crisis to tend to, her mind labels the work in front of her as boring. When that happens, her inner dialogue says, "I don't feel like doing this right now. I want to go outside and read my book. Or go for a walk or hike."
And her mind claps back with: This is boredom. This is distraction. You have work to do. Stop looking for excitement and get back to what needs to happen.
But here's what I offered to her—and to you: What if boredom isn't the problem? What if "I don't feel like doing this right now" is actually wisdom speaking?
If your conditioning has been the high-achieving path—through force, through will, through "I will make it happen"—there's an overriding that occurs.
Hunger? No, we're going to finish this project.
Frustration? Not now. Finishing this will solve that.
An intuitive pull to do something different? No. This is what we have to do so we're safe.
The mind is constantly overriding your feelings, your body, your intuition.
It's like dieting. You sit down and think, I want the pancakes. And immediately: No, you don't get the pancakes. You get the eggs. You'll never reach your goal otherwise. That's overriding desire. And when you've spent years—decades—overriding your inner wisdom, you lose touch with what's actually true for you in any given moment.
But as your system begins to slow down, as rewiring occurs, you start to hear things you've been overriding: I don't feel like doing that right now.
And here's where it gets interesting: That could actually be wisdom. Not the mind looking for a hit of excitement or avoiding something hard. But genuine inner guidance saying: Your body needs a walk right now. Your nervous system needs rest. This project can wait an hour.
The mind will immediately panic: But if you listen to that all the time, you'll never work! You'll never answer emails! You'll never get anything done! (Or you'll eat pancakes everyday and gain even more weight!) But that's not true—at least, not what I'm pointing to.
Here's what I invited L to explore—and what I'm inviting you to explore: When you notice the mind labeling something as "boring" or "mundane" or dismissing a feeling as "just distraction"—get curious. Ask: What exactly is happening in my body right now? What is happening in my senses?
Because the truth is, as we slow down to the speed of life, nothing is actually boring. I was looking at my dog's little rubber ducky raincoat during our call, and for the first time ever I noticed the raindrops are different sizes. I'd never seen that before—because my mind was always racing ahead: Raindrops. Ducks. Got it. Next. When you slow down enough to actually be present, everything becomes rich with detail.
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Here's what's tricky about the overrider pattern: Overriders tend not to even be aware of their feelings or body's needs. They're so used to the push pattern that they don't recognize the discomfort. Or, if they do become aware of the discomfort, they're certain that action is the way to make that feeling go away.
But there's another side of the spectrum.If you don't fall into the camp of overrider/doer, you may fall into the other side—avoider/non-doer. This is where you're so aware of your feelings that you believe them and don't take action. You distract yourself with other things consistently, waiting until the feeling is just "right" to take action.
In both cases, meeting the feeling is the antidote.Meeting is different than listening to it, pushing through it, or avoiding it. Meeting looks like turning toward the discomfort—or whatever the experience may be in the moment. That might be a racing mind, followed by fears of failure or rejection or humiliation. As we turn toward those experiences and let the energy move through our body, we land in the present.
In that place, we naturally hear our wisdom—with deeper clarity. And we're much more able to follow what it says because our minds are less busy, and we aren't believing the thoughts that created the suffering.
The first part for overriders is slowing down enough to recognize the feeling—to allow rest… a slower pace—so that apathy and boredom can show up. That's actually incredible progress on the path of achieving through receiving.
And when you slow down enough to actually feel your feelings—not override them, not push through them, not avoid them, but meet them—you start to access a different kind of wisdom.
The kind that says: Go for the walk. Read the book on the patio for half an hour. Take a nap. Say no to that meeting.
Or: Send the email. Put your workout clothes on. Say yes to your friend's invite. Start before you're ready.
And then you run the experiment. Maybe you go for the walk and realize: Oh yeah, that was my mind avoiding the spreadsheet. Or maybe you send the email and realize: Oh, that fear was just a story. This feels good. Or maybe you go for the walk and realize: Oh, that felt really good. Now I'm more energized to meet this project. Or maybe something else entirely happens.
But you're learning to trust your inner guidance again—instead of constantly overriding it or shrinking from it.
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This is what I mean by achieving through receiving. It's not about never working or never producing. It's about allowing your actions to arise from a place of inner alignment rather than force or fear. It's about listening to the wisdom of your body, your heart, your intuition—the parts of you that know what's needed in this moment.
It's about breaking the arbitrary rules you didn't even know you had.
You have to work from 9-5.
You can't take a break in the middle of a project.
You have to push through discomfort.
Productivity equals worth.
You can't start until you feel ready.
If you're afraid, you should wait.
You need all the answers first.
Action without certainty is reckless.
These aren't truths. These are rules the mind created to help you feel safe.
And breaking them—discovering what's actually true for you—can be one of the hardest and most liberating parts of this journey.
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If you're a high achiever who's hitting the wall—if the old pattern of pushing and forcing isn't working anymore—I want you to know: This isn't failure. This is an invitation.
And if you're someone who waits—endlessly preparing, distracting, or waiting for the "right" feeling to act—I want you to know: This isn't laziness. This is also an invitation.
An invitation to discover a better way to achieve in the world. One that doesn't require burning out or perfect conditions. One that doesn't require overriding your body—or believing every fear. One that's sourced not from the mind's will or the mind's resistance, but from the heart's wisdom. This is achieving through receiving.
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I'm going to be teaching a weekend workshop on this topic in late-August—diving deep into what it means to receive, how to stop overriding your inner wisdom, and how to achieve from a place of flow rather than force or fear. I'm finalizing the details now and will announce it soon.
➞ If you'd like to be the first to know, email hello@amberkrzys.com and let me know. I'll share the information with you before I share it publicly.
With loving,
Amber
P.S. To L and anyone else experiencing "boredom"—lean into it. Get curious about it. What is this feeling, really? What is my most honest experience in this moment? You might be surprised what reveals itself when you stop treating it as a problem to solve and start treating it as information to receive.
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