You're Not Failing — There's Nothing Wrong With Choosing Inner Work Over Ambition as an HSP

 By the end of this episode, you’ll discover how comparing yourself to more driven or externally successful people, even family, can quietly erode your self-worth as an HSP and what happens when you start valuing your own path.

Welcome to Stress Management for Highly Sensitive People. A podcast helping HSPs avoid overwhelm, eliminate stress, and find true inner freedom. I’m your host, Todd Smith, a facilitator of the work of Byron Katie. A way to question and reduce stressful thoughts, and you guessed it. I’m a highly sensitive person myself.

In this episode, he’ll discover how growing up beside a driven business-minded sister led me to question my self-worth, even while dedicating my life to inner work. The hidden shame many HSPs feel for not having big ambitions. How that shame feeds the myth of inadequacy and the quiet breakthrough that came from me when I stopped comparing myself to her version of success and embraced the strength of my own sensitivity.

Instead, this is an addition of Breakthrough Mondays, where I share success stories and helpful insights for highly sensitive people on the path to inner freedom. My sister is amazing. She is successful on so many levels, and I’ve looked up to her for a long time. We get along great, but I do notice a little bit of comparison that has been there for a long time.

She is goal oriented. She’s successful financially. She’s externally super impressive. When I was living in an ashram in my twenties practicing long hours of meditation. She was in New York City and she was working for big advertising firms, and she started her own company. She was successful with that.

She’s amazing. She’s worked with tons of big jobs where she has been a leader, has been someone who people look up to, someone who has a lot of experience in handling people and situations and businesses of all kinds. She’s like a keynote, keynote speaker. You name it, she’s does it all.

And her personal life is also really great. She’s got a great family. She travels, she has vacation time, she spends time with her family. And in so many ways I’m like, oh my God, I’m jealous. ’cause she’s just got this great life. And. By comparison, I can sometimes judge myself for being a little too quiet, a little too reserved, a little too inward, and my interests tend to be inward.

I love learning things. I love going deep into that inner world. But at the cost of sometimes the external world, and throughout my life, I’ve often had some struggles with money, just trying to make a living feeling like I’m not quite good enough, don’t quite fit in, and this is something that causes stress and it may cause stress for you too as a highly sensitive person.

Not all highly sensitive people are inward. Not all highly sensitive people are introverts. But we do have a different way of functioning, and it tends to be a little slower. It tends to be a little more thorough, and it often is in a more inward direction than say my sister, who is like gung-ho in all directions and is successful in so many of them.

So if I compare myself to her, then I lose, and that’s the problem with comparison. It’s in a way not fair. It’s like comparing apples and oranges. It’s just not a fair thing to do, but it doesn’t stop the mind from doing it. And my mind has done it many times and I sometimes think, oh my gosh, I’m behind.

I’m maybe weak. I’m not contributing to the world as much. I am I’m like failing in a way and. That’s uncomfortable to feel and it’s something that is also really good to bring to inner work. So luckily, I love processing these kinds of stressful thoughts, questioning what I believe, and seeing other ways of experiencing this difference between the two of us.

That doesn’t necessarily have to be stressful. I think the belief for me that has been there for a long time is this idea that I need to do as well externally as I do internally. In other words, I need to do both things. I need to be like super good at inner work, super good at meditation, being quiet, being balanced on an inner, on the inner level, and I need to be super good on the external level.

And like my sister in so many ways, I think this comes from my mom and my dad. They were very opposite. My mom was more externally focused and took a lot of care to do things well in the external world. She was very successful in her. She was a doctor but she was very successful and just was there for everyone in an external way more than my dad.

My dad, his forte was going inward. He loved meditation. He spent many hours doing that. He also was a doctor, but he gave up being a doctor to be a meditation teacher and to basically live a more quiet life. And his hobbies reflected that he was a woodworker. My mom, she flew a plane, that’s like a night and day difference between these two factors in me, and I’ve always been trying to balance them.

I think the beginnings of this came from when I was in school and I started getting report card. I originally went to a Montessori school where there was no report card or anything there. Probably some teacher parent conferences, but I wasn’t aware of them. But at some point, I think it was fourth grade, I went to a Catholic school and suddenly report cards were there, grades were there, and my mom was on it.

She wanted me to have good grades, and I remember like it was a shift for me, like suddenly I need to do well. Luckily, I love learning, so doing well in school was never a problem. It was the perfect balance of outward and inward for me. I got outward success, also known as good grades, and I had inward fun because I love learning things and I love exploring and all of that.

So I got a lot of accolades from my mom, a lot of support that way when I was in school, ironically, my sister, she did okay in school, but she didn’t try to do as well as I did, and she, I think she got B’S or something like that, whereas I got A’s. And and I almost, I think it was like an ego thing.

I’m like, oh yeah, I’m better than her. And so that was interesting in the early years. And then it reversed because after school I went and lived in an asam. I just focused on meditation. I had no outward signs of success, and my sister started having lots of signs of success. So suddenly the roles were reversed, and the same pride that made me feel a little better than her was now starting to make me feel worse than her.

So it’s just interesting to see what the mind does. It’s like I’m thinking I have to be successful in two worlds. That’s an even harder ask than just being successful in one world. And. I’ve even, doubted myself along the way in this comparison to my sister doubted whether all this inner work and all this, spiritual practice could be like a form of avoidance or maybe I’m just really, should be more worldly and just accept the world and get into it more.

I have those doubts sometimes and that makes it hard and. The sensitivity comes in as well because I am sensitive and I wonder, am I just too sensitive for the real world? I remember when I finished college and I was thinking, I’ll go to medical school. ’cause both my parents were doctors and my dad, who’s also a highly sensitive person, I believe talked me out of it.

And I remember him saying it’s really grueling. It’s gonna be tough and. And I went that direction that he pointed. And it makes me think oh, is there something like, I’m just not strong enough, good enough for the real world. I have to protect myself more than others. Is there something wrong with me?

And so these are the beliefs that kind of sit underneath when you are comparing yourself. And this happens a lot as highly sensitive people. We tend to notice how we don’t how we have more limitations than others, and then we sometimes can make ourselves feel less than as a result. I did an interesting piece of work.

I used the work of Byron Katie, which is a way to question any stressful thought, and I questioned the thought at one point that I have to catch up with her, with my sister. I need to catch up with her like I’m behind. It was so cool to really give myself time to look at that and to see how powerful a thought like that was how much it was influencing me.

And it could make me push myself. It could make me not satisfied with the amount of money I was making, the success in career, the, all these external measures. We’re just not good enough. ’cause I’m like, I have to catch up. I have to catch up and it’s like this psychological pressure all the time.

And then what I found when I questioned this is that without the thought that I have to catch up with her, I am like, it’s like you’re sailing with the motor on and you turn the motor off and it’s just oh yes, I can just be what I am and it’s good enough for me. It led to a turnaround, which I love, which is I have to catch up with me instead of having to catch up with her.

I have a different path. I have my own path, and my interests are different, and my aspirations are different, and some of those are aspirations of taking care of myself in a really good way. And that means living a balanced life, not working 80 hours or not working. I don’t even work 40 hours, just working in a balanced way.

Or I have time for meditation or I have time for inner work, or I have a life that is interesting to me or I have time for learning. Learning is essential for me. That’s where I, what I love. So I have to catch up with myself instead of trying to catch up with her. And for me, that just shifted that feeling of comparison.

’cause how do you compare an apple and an orange? They’re both great. They’re both sweet. They’re both good fruits. And where’s the need to compare? So with that, I can see that, that we both have our advantages and disadvantages for who we are, for our personalities, for our nature, and for the careers that we chose and the lifestyles that we lead.

And hers comes with problems that I would not like, like she flies all over the country. That would be tough on me. She worked long hours, she has forever. That would be tough on me. There are a lot of things that aren’t a match for the kind of person that I actually am. And so if I’m trying to be somebody, try to be like her when that’s just not who I am, it’s a mismatch and it’s just never gonna work.

And so why push myself in that direction? It’s only a mindset. When I think that way, then I get caught in this loop of wanting to be someone else, wanting to be her instead of wanting to be me. And when I step back from that catch up with myself, then I start to find that I’m great where I am, and I’m just gonna enjoy my life in its particular flavor.

In this episode, we looked at how growing up beside a driven business-minded sister led me to question my self-worth. Even while dedicating myself to inner work, which is actually a high value for me, and it’s so interesting how the mind gets caught in this trap without really noticing it. And we also looked at the hidden shame, many HSPs feel for not having big ambitions and how that shame feeds the myth of inadequacy.

If I think I have to be big and. In the culture that I live in it’s built into the culture. Have to be big, have to have something successful that others can see. It’s cultural. And if I buy into that and forget who I am, then I feel like I’m not good enough. And then finally we looked at the quiet breakthrough that came when I stopped chasing her version of success and embraced the strength.

Of my own sensitivity instead, and I started started looking at how to catch up with myself instead of how to catch up with her. So I’m left with a feeling of that I already have the perfect path for me, that I’m on the right path for me, and that gives a feeling of contentment, gives a feeling of ease, and I can enjoy my sister and celebrate her success.

And I can enjoy myself and celebrate my own versions of success. So thanks for listening. It’s fun to explore with you. This podcast comes out three times a week on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Join me next time for Self-Compassion Wednesdays where we dive deeper into understanding ourselves as highly sensitive people by exploring the unique traits that shape our experience.

Tired of feeling overwhelmed by everything all at once. Take the HSP stress test@trueinnerfreedom.com. You’ll also find a link in the show notes. The test will reveal your unique sensitivity profile. Including how your nervous system naturally responds to stimulation, emotions, social energy, and more.

You’ll also gain a clearer picture of how stress might be amplifying that sensitivity. Take the HSP stress test now. It’s a powerful first step on your journey to true inner freedom.