I Got Everything I Thought I Wanted. Why Am I Still Not Happy? ⭐
Why am I not happy when I've achieved so much? For most of my life, I believed success was something to be earned through constant achievement. Better grades. More degrees. Bigger titles. Higher salaries. Another accomplishment to prove I was moving forward.
The problem? Every time I reached a goal, the finish line moved.
In this episode, I share my personal journey from living with what I call "Achievement Fever" to redefining success on my own terms. Growing up in a culture where being number one mattered above all else, I learned to measure my worth through accomplishments and comparison. It left me constantly chasing more while rarely feeling satisfied with what I already had.
I talk about the hidden cost of viewing life as a competition, why external validation can never truly fill us up, and how becoming a mother forced me to confront some of my deepest beliefs about success, identity, ambition, and feminism.
Leaving my career to become a full-time mom was one of the hardest decisions I've ever made. It challenged my sense of self and forced me to ask a difficult question: If I take away the titles and achievements, who am I?
Through stories of motherhood, career sacrifice, and learning to celebrate the quiet moments that society often overlooks, I share how I began shifting my ambition away from chasing more and toward protecting what mattered most.
This episode is for anyone who feels exhausted by the pressure to keep achieving, comparing, and proving themselves. Maybe the answer isn't doing more. Maybe it's defining what is enough.
- Growing up with the pressure to be number one
- The exhausting cycle of "Achievement Fever"
- Why success can feel empty when it's driven by external validation
- The myth that someone else's success is your loss
- Motherhood, identity, and redefining feminism
- Leaving my career and becoming a full-time mom
- Learning to celebrate quiet accomplishments
- Finding freedom in defining my own version of enough
What are you still chasing—and what would happen if you decided you already had enough?
If this episode resonated with you, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who may need to hear this.
The world will always ask for more, but you get to decide what's enough.
New episodes of Freedom of Enough drop every Tuesday.
Resources & Links
Check out my website: www.freedomofenough.com
Follow Kim on Instagram: @kimcpatten
Audiobook and hard copy of Pivot: available now on Amazon
Download 7 Mistakes High-Achieving Women Make When Facing a Life-Changing Decision
00:08
Welcome to the Freedom of Enough podcast. I'm Kim Patten, author of Pivot and your host. This is a place for honest conversations about what it really means to build a life that is true to ourselves. Because we don't have to earn our worth, we are already enough. Let's discover what enough looks like starting now.
00:41
start today's episode with a question. When was the last time you felt truly, deeply content? Not because you are successful or busy, but just doing enough or being enough. I grew up in a culture where my accomplishment only matter if it is measurable, such as did I get all A's?
01:08
Did I make it to the top high school? Not if I help others with their homework or being kind to my friends or families. I was taught that if I wasn't number one, I was the loser. If others were winning, I was losing. It made life feel like a zero sum game. And this left me with a permanent case of
01:37
achievement fever. I felt that if I stopped moving, I would be replaced. I would be obsolete. So I'm not always chasing the next and never really take the time to celebrate my accomplishment. To rest and to ponder if this is something I really want to keep pursuing and is it enough? If I graduated from college, it will be graduate school. Then it will be PhD or certification after certification.
02:06
If I make $30,000 a year, then it will be $50,000 a year, then $70,000 a year, then $100,000 a year, $200,000 a year. It's never going to end. If I were to tell myself, I just need to publish one book and that will be enough. And after that I'm thinking, Oh, I will write another book. There needs to be another book.
02:33
It's a never ending pursuit, but I'm so tired and so stressed out. I had to start thinking about why am I doing it? Is it I actually want to do it because internally it's important to me? And, or is it just so I can continue to achieve something? Have you ever felt the need to pretend to be busy just so no one think you have slowed down?
03:03
That is the prison of external validation. And honestly, this podcast idea has been brewing in my mind for quite some time now. And I really try to ground myself for protecting my rest and tying in between launching new ideas. It is extremely hard for me to do because of how I wire, but it's something I'm intentionally trying to be better at. Now,
03:30
Let's look at why we chase the awards, the titles, the followers. Ask yourself, do I still want this promotion if no one knows or care about it? What if you don't update or announce it on LinkedIn or don't introduce your impressive titles to other? If these things were invisible, would you still want it?
03:53
So much of our drives come from a fear of being less than, rather than a passion for being better than we were yesterday. The cause of this competition is humility and teamwork. When we view everyone as a rival, we can't have a community. We can't have a win-win. Because we don't believe everyone has their unique contribution, but only the one making it to the top matters.
04:21
And that is wrong. A lot of you know about my work and my book, The Pivot, but the book was born out of a personal crisis. I was someone with an MBA, a career woman, a feminist. I believe that for a woman to be equal, she had to be in the boardroom. I looked down on the idea of being a housewife.
04:49
I thought it was a sacrifice of potential. I still remember when a friend of mine who admire had a successful career and a PhD who left her job to be with her kids full time. I just couldn't wrap my mind around why she would give that up to be with her children full time. I truly believe at that time you can have it all and it shouldn't be a choice.
05:18
At the same time, I interpreted as she's becoming a submissive housewife to her partner without actually believing it could be a hundred percent her choice. And she knows that's her enough and what makes her happy and fulfilled. And then I have my children and my heart started doing something. My brain didn't give it permission to do. It started pulling me home.
05:46
It was a brutal tug of war. I questioned myself worth, I thought, if I no longer have a job title I worked so hard to get, who am I really? I certainly didn't want to be a housewife. That sounds like a weak thing to do. But I eventually quit, even if that's the title people will call me. And it was the hardest choice, but the one I know I will regret if I don't make.
06:15
I had to accept that I didn't care if people looked down on me as long as I won't have regret in the life I'm living. And let's be honest, even though it was 100 % my choice and I would not trade it for anything else, it was still so hard. The sense of feeling lost, but knowing it is the right thing to do still doesn't make it easy. I remember it was still hard to introduce myself at the playground.
06:45
or social outing when someone asks me, so what do you do? I stopped saying stay at home mom and started saying full time mom because let's be real, the job description is at least 10 pages long. Yet the external recognition is not that high. No one gives you a bonus for a successful grocery trip. There's no employee of the month for potty training.
07:14
But then there are the quiet accomplishment. I was there to potty train my son when he was two. He also found his love in biking. I was able to lean into that passion and take him biking every day when my daughter was at her half day preschool. I was able to witness firsthand how he mastered a two wheel bike from balancing to paddling when he was only two years old.
07:42
I saw the pride and joy in his eyes. If I had been at the office, I would have heard about it from the nanny. I would have missed the spark. That moment was invaluable to society or the economy, but it was everything to me. It is a memory I will always cherish with him. I did go back to my career when my youngest turned four because he wanted to go to school full time. And yes,
08:11
I saw colleagues who were ahead of me. I had to look at their promotion and said, I'm happy for them, but their win is not my loss. My promotion was the foundation I built with my family. And honestly, I'm still struggling with it because I'm choosing a career path, which I can still show up for my kids. I also often forget because of my career break, I got to create something.
08:42
like writing my book to eventually create this podcast. Ultimately, I have to redefine success and channel my ambition from chasing my career to protecting my time with my family. I have to define my own enough. We have to be honest. You can succeed in everything else, money, fame, power, but if you fail to prioritize your family,
09:11
You have still failed at the end of the day, your job won't be the one holding your hand when you're old, your kids, your spouse, and your health wheel. So I want you to look at your life this week. Where are you chasing a number one spot that doesn't actually matter? Where can you find your freedom of enough? It is okay to pivot. It is okay.
09:41
to be quietly successful.
09:44
Thank you so much for spending this time with me today. It really means a lot to me. If today's conversation resonated with you and you're navigating your own question about success, purpose, or what enough looks like, I would love to share a free guide with you. The seven mistakes high achieving women make when facing a life changing decision. It's a resource I wish I had when I was facing my own
10:13
big decisions. You can download it using the link in the show notes or by visiting freedomofenough.com. Next Tuesday, I'm joined by former TV reporter who made the unexpected decision to become a stay at home dad. His story challenges many of the assumptions we make about work, identity and success. And I can't wait to share our conversation with you. Until next time.
10:43
Remember, the world will always ask for more, but you get to decide what enough.