Issue No. 15 | May 19, 2026 | Dr. Jacqueline Ashley, PCC
Whose Bar Are You Clearing?
Your achievement was always real. Your worth was never the question.
The inner work of achievement orientation
FEEL DEEPLY
Your chest is feeling tight and you can’t seem to shake loose what’s weighing on your back and shoulders. They announced your promotion five days ago when you breathed in, but haven’t quite exhaled yet.
It’s 8 p.m. The kitchen light is still on and your tea went cold. You’ve got this quarter’s targets on the third tab of your laptop…again. You haven’t slept properly since the announcement and are dealing with the Sunday scaries.
Tomorrow’s your first Monday in this new role and the company-wide meeting is just a few weeks away. You want to deliver the first big win for your new team this quarter and give the leaders above you proof that they made the right choice.
If you hold a marginalized identity (e.g., LGBTQ+, disabled, woman, neurodivergent, and/or person of color), the bar feels even higher. You know you’ve never fallen short of the bar, but are judged by a different standard.
What more is expected to keep what you just earned, or will they decide you weren’t the right choice?
You already know that earning the role and keeping it are two very different things. There’s always more to prove. The drive that got you promoted is already positioning you for what’s next.
Last week’s issue was about sustainable composure that flows from emotion regulation. This week, it’s about what’s driving you to keep achieving so much.
THINK CRITICALLY
You learned that your worth was tied to your output. It’s something the system rewards, which is a reason why burnout is a common organizational problem.
Achievement orientation is about striving to excel, continuous improvement, setting challenging goals, and taking calculated risks. But any strength can get overused and become a constraint. Executive coach Luis Velasquez refers to this as overextension of identity.
This overextension becomes an unseen gap (an inclusive alternative to blind spot) because it’s become who you think you are. Even though others can see what you can’t, it’s something rewarded by the system, which depends on you and others to keep it going.
Striving like this is okay until it’s at the expense of self-care basics (adequate sleep, etc.). That’s toxic productivity. Producing output in overdrive is the overextension at work, so it feels non-negotiable. We’ve all done this.
Dr. Susan David’s “Walking Your Why” involves both core values and the goals that matter most: ones you’ve chosen, not ones given to you or told to you by society.
If you hold a marginalized identity, you had to survive within a system that required you to prove that you weren’t over-claiming the seat. The overextension helped with that, but you have to keep proving it time and again.
The drive that the system rewarded became what you now can’t distinguish from yourself. Don’t eliminate the drive. Find out where it came from.
Strive more for what you value rather than what you need to prove.
LEAD POWERFULLY
If Context is one of your strengths, you like looking into the past to better understand the present. The overextension has a history: a moment, a person, what the system rewarded that you did, and tied it to your worth. Go back to where it started and recognize it for what it is. Separate who you really are from what the system shaped you to be by “Walking Your Why.”
Achiever is a strength for me. If it’s one of yours, too, you like to checkmark off completed work to feel accomplished. Because you have the stamina to work long and hard, it’s too easy to go into overdrive when you’ve accomplished a lot yet feel like it’s never enough. Figure out whether the bar you’re trying to clear is realistic and if you or someone else set it.
If Significance is a strength, you want your work to matter and be recognized by others. The overextension turns every contribution into evidence of whether you even matter. Determine what contributions flow from your values vs. contributions about proving your worth.
The Integration
Disrupt the script to undo the overextension of identity. It will take time. Redefine achievement. Recognize toxic productivity—when you’re going beyond what’s reasonable and realistic—especially when your basic self-care drops (beyond an occasional basis) to keep up the output. Whose bar are you reaching for? The disruption is the inner work.
This Week's Momentum
📌 Walk back through one striving moment from the last seven days. Ask why you needed it. From that answer, ask again. Keep going until you hit something that didn’t start as yours.
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