Stop “striving yourself crazy,” Vancouver entrepreneur warns

Vancouver (NEWS 1130) – You could say Claire Booth is the patient zero of achiever fever.

In fact, the Vancouver-based entrepreneur and coach wrote the book on it. She is the author of The Achiever Fever Cure: How I Learned to Stop Striving Myself Crazy.

“It’s not just professionals that experience this,” she explains. “It’s all over the place.”

Booth admits she herself suffered from achiever fever for years.

“We are held prisoner by this voice in our head that tells us we need to work harder, strive harder, be better, improve, and grow,” she says. “And we become a slave to that master.”

She warns it can definitely take a toll. “We don’t want to take a look at it, so we distract ourselves by drinking a bottle of wine or bingeing a show on Netflix or eating way more than we actually need to.”

Booth says the first step in solving the problem is identifying it.

“Once we start to really pay attention to what that voice in our head is telling us, what that inner critic is telling us, we can start to break the addiction, of feeding off of it,” she says. “Because ultimately that’s what achiever fever is.”

Once you do that, Booth says you will achieve at a level you never thought possible.

“What will happen is you’ll start acting and making decisions, not from a place of having to prove yourself, but from a place of truth and authenticity,” Booth explains. “And you’ll be able to perform at levels you had no idea you were capable of.”

She adds you can start to break the cycle by making a few adjustments.

“You need to find just a little bit of time,” Booth says. “Even if it’s just putting your phone down for 45 seconds and staring out the window, just tiny little changes like that in your life can start to add up.”

The Achiever Fever Cure is published by LifeTree Media.