Confessions: Addicted to Achievement

This is a blog post I wrote about 1 year ago on Identityculture.org. I received so much positive feedback that I thought I should post it over here too. 

Injecting Progress

Let me take you back to Dale 2 years ago: “I can’t tell you how disgustingly addicted I am to progress. My life is built on milestones, goals, visions, and cold hard work. When I say work, I mean WORK. Back-to-back years of 60 hour work weeks. It’s an illness that is stronger than cocaine and almost as lethal. It slowly slides greed, sugar coated purpose, false prayers, and an uncontent heart into the mix. Before you know it, you’ve lost sight of Christ, your family, your ministry, and your friends.”
 

Spinning Plates & Huffing Ideas

It begins with ideas, tons of ideas. They seem fun at first, maybe even a calling. Some work out, and some don’t. But when one does, the high gets in your veins, it hits your soul and the chase begins. The chase that you neverwin. The cycle moves faster, you get better, you make more money, you gain influence, you get busy, REAL busy, and the chase continues.

It feels so good, it’s hard to imagine that life should be any other way. You feel like a king. Thousands of Facebook friends, girls on your voicemail, and rumors that you know aren’t true, but you let them slide anyway. Life begins to happen in the future, and the future only. You forget what you ate for dinner last night, and worse, you forget who you ate it with. You brain is always thinking, solving, pushing and pulling, and you’re never EVER fully present.

Then it hits you. Hard. You are so fanatically busy in the pursuit, that you miss life’s incredibly important moments. Your first year of marriage, your relationship with your brother, and the death of a friend, all because you can’t stop. Literally, you cannot do it. The cell phone is in your hand, your in the car, the meetings keep coming, and successes are never successful enough. You have officially lost it, and it feels like nobody on the planet can help you.
 

Finding Your Almighty Dealer

This was my life for about five years straight. I made $2 million dollars in revenue by the time I was 24 years old. But at what cost? My family… my memories… Then the solution came to me. And of course, it was the one you all are guessing. God the Father. I came home. Through a treacherous journey of sacrifice and heart wrenching release, I began to slow down. Life lost its blur and I began to see again. I knew my friends again, and I knew my God again. He gave me the better race, the race worth running, and the race worth winning.

This might not be you, yet. But be weary how it slips in, it may just be the most deceiving addiction you can face. Your value is not in your achievements, it’s in the Almighty Dealer of Grace, Jesus Christ.

Have you dealt with an addiction to achievement? If so, let me know below.