The Burden of High Expectations

There is a subtle kind of exhaustion that comes from being haunted by your past self.

When you devote your youth to exceeding every expectation and goal, getting compliments on how “smart” or “capable” you are, people take for granted what is yet to come, and they make their predictions about your potential. You become convinced of them too.

But sooner or later the fuel will run dry.

Nobody warns you about the crash that will happen when exhaustion finds its way to you. It’s not only a lack of motivation; it’s a lack of understanding of yourself. Every single thing that was once easy is suddenly exhausting. The standards that were easily achieved become impossible to meet.

The problem is not in failure itself, but the difference between who you used to be and who you have become.

You spend half of your energy solving present issues, while the rest goes into explaining your failure to meet expectations. Instead of looking at your past achievements with pride, you look at them with disappointment, because you don’t know how to regain your motivation and make yourself work as before.

The reality is that running on empty for years carries a tax. You can’t endlessly demand performance from a machine that has received zero maintenance.

Lamenting about how your past momentum has disappeared does not mean that you were just a pretender before, nor does it mean that you are now useless. It just means that you hit the wall. And staying there, exhausted and uncertain, is not a pleasant feeling to have.