bell hooks says that we “have learned to think about love primarily in relation to…the context of reward and punishment. From early childhood on, most of us remember being told we were loved when we did things pleasing to our parents.” My first thought, reading your post, is that you should think about your childhood. Did your parents reward you for visible achievements, like good grades, and withhold love at other times? (I experienced this! I learned that in therapy.) When you are always trying to project this image of yourself as accomplished, you naturally feel a split between your authentic self and your “accomplished” self. However, “this division between a false self invented to please others and a more authentic self need not exist when we cultivate positive self-esteem” (bell hooks). One important element of self-esteem is how you actually spend your time - do you spend your time at a job you enjoy? “Many jobs undermine self-love because they require that workers constantly prove their worth.” When I ask whether you enjoy your job, I’m not asking whether you think it is worth tolerating for future material gain. Enjoying your job means that you find it emotionally fulfilling on its own, NOT as a means to an end. Would you do your job for free? There are so many reasons we struggle we with self-love. We live in a culture that tells us to buy more and more in order to fix our supposed imperfections (ex: “anti-aging” makeup and skincare). Resisting those messages is difficult. If this is a feeling you have regularly - needing yearly accomplishments to feel valuable - I encourage you to: - Go to therapy and talk about your childhood - Be honest about your failures and flaws to everyone you know, so you can live as your authentic self I don’t struggle with the “achievement cycle” anymore, but I had feelings similar to you before talking about my childhood in therapy. I don’t think therapy is a solution to every emotional problem, but it actually helped me in this case.