In the aftermath of last nights National Championship football game, it’s easy to get caught up in the celebration of winning. The celebration of accomplishment. We celebrate the sacrifices of hard work by individuals given to reaching their goal of being called The Best.

In my personal journey, I discovered a little while back that Coach Urban Meyer of Ohio State and I have a a lot in common. Hear me out on this… We both love football and are high-octane achievers. Maybe you are the same. However, we also share this similarity:  We’ve both paid a heavy price for our compulsive obsessions to win. That’s something I hope you don’t have in common with us.

With that in mind, I wanted to share some lessons I’ve learned about the “cost” of winning. Because while I reveled in the celebration of accomplishment like so many others, I was unknowingly setting myself up for disaster. Coach Meyer did the same. If you are a leader or consider yourself to be a high-achiever (or desire to be), I ask that you take a few minutes and consider the lessons both Coach Meyer and I learned. Doing so may prevent you from paying the high cost of winning by showing you a new way to succeed.

In a November 13, 2015 article in the Orlando Sentinel, Wayne Coffey (co-author of Above the Line: Lessons in Leadership and Life from a Championship Season) said this of Urban Meyer (one of the winningest college football coaches ever):

“Urban said if he hadn’t left University of Florida when he did and made the changes he had to make in his life he doesn’t think he would be alive today. He told me the story about the night they won their second national championship and were having a big celebration. In the middle of the party, the coaches noticed Urban wasn’t at the party.

An assistant coach went over to Meyer’s office and found him there, with his door closed, working on recruiting for the next year. The assistant asked: ‘What in the heck are you doing?  We just won the national championship?’ Urban was so driven and his perspective was so warped that he was sure if he even took a few minutes to celebrate his amazing achievement, he would fall behind.”

Not long after this Meyer resigned as head coach at University of Florida citing the need to attend to his health and family. Then, a year later, he was announced as the the new head football coach at Ohio State.

I get this. I’ve often felt the tug of that imaginary stat sheet in the sky – and I desperately wanted it to finally show that I had done enough. I felt “people” expected more from me. So I kept raising my game to meet that “expectation” – I kept trying to get more impressive things done. And it wasn’t that these things were bad. In fact, I thought my actions were good and worthwhile.

However I’ve come to realize that the majority of the stress I carried at that time was completely of my own making. I had a significant hidden “driver” inside me. I needed to prove that those who believed in me were right… and those I perceived didn’t believe in me were wrong.

We all have some story we’ve believed about ourself. It fuels our need for many things, including accomplishment. We can’t stand the stress we’re under – yet we can’t stand the thought of not winning or accomplishing even more. So we continue our relentless striving.

That striving is based off the ever-elusive answer to the questions: “What am I here to do? And have I done enough of it?”. It can initially propel us to success, but over time, it can push us so hard and so far that it drops us off a cliff.

On that relentless road to success, here are three lessons I’ve learned from my own life and seeing others travel down that same road:

1) When you seek to achieve or improve, you may feel like you’re not doing enough of the right things.

It’s easy to feel guilty for things we haven’t done enough of – like being there for a sick or hurting friend, neglecting our kids or our parents. If we travel a lot or have been distracted too often by our life, we may feel regret that we’re letting someone down.

Sometimes, we feel like we haven’t lived up to our “full potential.” But who actually knows what our full potential is? Who knows what we’ve been designed to do and be in this world? It’s a funny thing, “potential”… When we reach what was the last notch of our fullest potential, somehow the mark mysteriously moves and start striving for a whole new level. And we do this again and again.

This has totally been my story. I constantly wrestled with the question: “Am I doing enough?” More often than not, the answer came back: “No, it’s not enough.”

2) When you seek to achieve or improve, you may end up doing the wrong thing.

None of us wake up in the morning thinking “I’d just like to go out there and do something stupid.” But sometimes, as we seek to do the right thing, we end up getting it wrong. And if we don’t pay attention to the warning signs, that wrong thing can grow to become several wrong things and turn into the precursor of a great personal downfall.

Being purposeful and productive has always been a huge values for me. For as long as I can remember, I felt there was a special reason for my life. I thought God made me to do something good and I was determined to be out there, everyday getting it done in a big way. I got a lot of satisfaction from that.

But there was a nagging problem. My accomplishments, though they were many, never seemed big enough. They didn’t match the vision in my head. I’d been told all my life that I had so much potential. And I started feeling guilty that maybe I wasn’t doing all I was fully capable of.

The “God-side” of me always wanted to help as many people as possible find a loving relationship with Him. I was doing that. It was an authentic, driving passion in my own life and I wanted to see it happen for others. Eventually, the church I led grew in size and stature, yet what should have felt like joy at the accomplishment of a worthy goal had me feeling whipped while I start looking for the next big hill.

Overtime all this put enormous stress on my body, my emotional state, and my marriage. Without realizing it at the time,  it created a vulnerability in me that led to the greatest failure of my life.

3) When you seek to achieve or improve, learn to celebrate having enough meaningful purpose while doing your best.

We started this conversation talking about football and celebrating victory. But victory is elusive, and when the focus is on the achievement vs. the purpose and the effort, stress starts to invade. What would it look like to both celebrate and embrace the concept of “having enough” – in terms of meaningful purpose – all while giving our best effort?

When I think of someone who knew the answer to the question “What am I here to do?”, I think of the one who founded and initially led the greatest enterprise in history – Jesus.

He seemed exemplified what it is like to live out He was born to do and He “showed up” by making daily contributions toward that purpose. And He did all of this without the unending stress that more needed to be done.

Jesus was the ultimate leader of leaders. He was ambitious and became humanly tired from a long days’ work. Yet He didn’t try to heal everyone everywhere he went. Some might say He could have reached more people, had an even “greater” impact if He had just tried harder… held more meetings… Talked with the “right” people.

Yet even at age thirty-three, He had the presence of heart to recognize in prayer as His martyrdom approached

“I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do.”
John 17:4

Jesus lived and worked out of a perpetual connection with and in assurance of His relationship to God, His Father. He was so secure in that relationship that there was nothing for Him to prove – to Himself or to anyone else. When you already have the approval of the King of Heaven, what more can the world offer you?

So how can we do our work well, without powering up into striving mode?

God is predisposed to be pleased with us. Always. Jesus shows us that taking on huge hills, as leaders, in hopes of gaining God’s (or anyone else’s) attention is a total waste of our time and effort. Only when we recognize that are we finally able to bring the best of what we’ve been made to do, rather than of doing things in order to prove that we’re the best.

At that time, Jesus came from Nazareth…and was baptized by John…Just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, He saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove and a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”
Mark 1:9-11

The word from heaven on Jesus is “I am well pleased with you.” When this was spoken, Jesus has done nothing notable. He has not healed anyone. He has not spoken his first word to the multitudes. He hadn’t yet fed the masses. But God was already smiling.

This totally messes with us. We live in a work-for-reward culture. The more hours you put in the more folks love you. We try to be impressive in hopes of earning a “well done.”  Eventually, we will learn that the treadmill of achievement and power brings no lasting satisfaction. It might bring a nice pay check, but where is the satisfaction and fulfillment?

As leaders, we need to see our achievements through the long term lens of God’s pleasure with us. That please is based on participating in relationship with Him, not performing for Him or others. The connection between you and Him can’t be added to or taken away no matter how high up you go in your company, or how many albums you sell, or hits you get on YouTube.

Caron and I speak more about this principle  in our new book, Nothing to Prove, which is coming out in softcover in just a few weeks. In this book, we share candidly about what the cost of “winning” was for us, as we describe both the breakdowns and breakthrough we’ve both experienced in regards to achievement and ambition. We know these things are eating our culture alive, and through this book, we share tools how others like yourself can experience lasting fulfillment and free yourself from striving – before destruction takes place.

To learn more about Nothing to Prove or to sign-up to reserve your copy once it’s available, please visit NothingToProveBook.com.

Caron and I will also be going more in-depth on this subject on The Live True Podcast. Be watching for it.

Take a minute now and sit with these questions as you think about your own need to achieve:

• What “story” am I living into? Is there a narrative underneath my accomplishments that pushes me to do more and more and more? What is it? Where did it come from?

• Whose voice do I hear saying I’ll be “super amazing” or “sadly disappointing”?

• What am I afraid I’ll miss out on if I don’t accomplish more?