Stress, Success and High Achievers

Hi guys,
I know this is out of my normal timetable and the content isn't really what I talk about. But I just started feeling really...agitated/moved/idek about the content. You can catch up on this week's episode of Insight on SBS here. Call me boring, but watching Insight, Q&A and other show like these has become what I do in my free time....

So this is all about being a high achiever, pushing yourself or being pushed to become a high achiever.
I've come to the conclusion are two categories: the internally motivated ones and the externally motivated people.
Internally motivated people are brilliant - they will strive for what they want actively. So parents and other people don't need to push them.
On the other hand, most of us externally motivated - we need something to make us to do something. If there is no one/nothing pushing people, like me, I will be perfectly lying around and do nothing everyday. The reason why some of us aren't internally motivated is because we don't know what we want to do: we've been following a really set path and we've become comfortable with it. According to the psychologist on the show, it's perfectly fine for us to not know what to do (since our brains our still developing...not really understanding it though...)

Moving onto the HS kids on the show - there's been memes all over FB so I think you've seen it already. Well if you haven't seen it, it's practically just a guy who topped 2U maths in the HSC, and got an ATAR of 98.65. He wasn't too happy with it because it was under average. The live audience was more or less outraged with it, but I totally understand that feeling. When you're in such a competitive world - we've put most of NSW kids on a scale - we had to be wary of every single mark and half mark. Although a 98 and a 99 sounds so close to the perfect score, it's actually a very far way (0.05 is 60-70 kids). Just using myself as an example, I did well in the HSC and the ATAR, but it was obviously not good enough. Straight after the results came out, I was (and still am at times) plagued with this horrible wave of emotions where I the feeling that "I've just fell short" as I literally did.

People are always saying that having money, status and material goods is not success. But I disagree to some degree because of a saying that came across some years ago in a drama. In Chinese it's 錢不是萬能，但是沒有錢就萬萬不能.When translated back to English, it goes along the lines of "money isn't everything, but without money, there is nothing". I've been living by this saying for quite some time now (of my extremely short life). I do understand that money isn't everything, but in reality, money is essential, it's crucial to survival.

Some people say happiness is success - that may be true in some place in the world, but I definitely don't think it's true here in the competitive 21st century we live in. Some people say they'll be happy without money, as long as they're doing what they love. The first reaction I get is, what about food? So what if you are doing you love, you'll be hungry. I don't know about you, but I can't be happy when I'm hungry. We need money to satisfy the human needs - reference to Maslow's hierarchy here! ^^

Maybe we all just need lessons about accepting to be mediocre. We've all (at least I have) to strive for the best, and never settle for just ok. I think, when you have a grading system in place, it means you should aim for the top. In my opinion, I think it's intrinsic in human nature. It may not be aiming to be dux of your school, or the 99.95 or being a millionaire, but we all want to be the best in something. It just may be getting a new high-score in a game you're playing. For me, while I am aiming for HDs and Ds in my first semester in uni, I'm also aiming to get to 2048 in the 2048 game.

Now that my rant's over, I'm going to hit the books and study for my assessment tomorrow! See you guys soon!