“When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”
This is known as Goodhart’s Law and it captures the truth of one of the biggest traps high achievers fall into.
When thinking about personal development, the target is and always is, to like ourselves.
But when we treat the measure of our progress as a judgement on our self-worth, it stops guiding effort and starts owning us. We defer liking ourselves until we hit the target.
And because we're ambitious by our nature, we'll surpass our "I'll like myself when.... (insert measure)" and believe it wasn't good enough in the first place (therefore we're not good enough).
Or we fall-short of the "I'll like myself when.... (insert measure)" and believe we're not good enough.
Either way, it feels like failure, and confirms our deepest fear - I AM NOT ENOUGH.
Try:
Liking yourself first.
Setting targets for general direction rather than to feel worthy.
Using measures for feedback, not self-worth.
Measuring progress from the POV of, "Today I'm enough but I could adjust XYZ to be a bit better at this thing I'm doing".
