Why High Achievers Struggle With Anxiety (The Hidden Belief Driving Achiever Syndrome)

0:00Welcome back to The Vault Unlocked. I'm Kayvon Kaye and today we're diving into something that almost no high performer wants to admit out loud. Achiever syndrome. That constant pressure to win. The anxiety that creeps in the second you take your foot off the gas. The feeling that no matter how much you accomplish, it's still not enough. My guest today is Tim Schur, a peak performance hypnotist who spent 36 years studying the human mind and has done over 16 ,000 sessions helping high achievers break the unconscious patterns that keep them stuck. We're talking about the deep programming formed between ages zero and six, the hidden beliefs driving imposter syndrome, burnout, addiction, self-sabotage, and even success ceilings, and the one core shift that upgrades the software running in the background of your life.

0:53If you're building at a high level, if you look successful on the outside but still feel the pressure inside, this conversation will hit. Let's unlock it.

1:12I'm super excited. Deep dive into this. Tim, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you. Pleasure to be here. For anyone that's listening, they don't know who Tim is. Tell us a little bit about Tim and how did you get to where you are? Yeah. So I started out looking for the cure for anxiety. I wanted to get rid of that feeling that something bad was going to happen if I took my foot off the gas. You know, I always felt like I could never just relax. I wasn't comfortable in my own skin. So I had to do something to feel worthy of love, right? Or do something to get people to like me. And it kind of turned me into a super achiever and a workaholic.

1:55And I accomplished a lot. And I found that even though I had accomplished a lot, I still had that anxiety inside. I still had those worries and fears. And so I spent my whole life looking for the cure for anxiety. And I went to school for psychology and got my degrees, but I found that it wasn't cutting it. You could talk about your problems forever, but it doesn't actually change it. And I walked over coals with Tony Robbins and jumped up and down at seminars and did all these things. And I still wasn't feeling that peace I was looking for. And so over the years, I found that it turns out that there's these beliefs that we have in our minds that are holding us back and keeping us stuck.

2:40It's like the software in our brain. And when you upgrade that software, it unlocks you from the fears, from the worries, from the stress, from what I call achiever syndrome. So I've been actively trying to figure out us humans for the last 36 years. Most people know me as a peak performance hypnotist. I'm one of the top hypnotists because I've been able to help so many people. I've done 16 ,000 sessions. And I specialize in working with people who are really high performers. They're not into the BS. They need results immediately. They don't want to spend years in therapy. They want to get it done.

3:19And a lot of the people have told me I want an easy button and I better get results today. And I'm like, bring it on. And so that's me in a nutshell. There's so much to go from there because if we go right back where you touched on the anxiety, I think there's a problem in this world with anxiety. And I call it fake anxiety. I'm not saying the anxiety is fake, but it's like manufactured fake anxiety is just from just being on social media. There's tons of studies showing kids with all this anxiety because of that. And then you discussed, which I loved, traditional, I'm going to call it traditional medicine almost, right?

4:00Psychology to real life psychology of what you're seeing, the gap there is. So I definitely want to deep dive into those two things I think are very important. And then And I also want to get to the most important is the one thing. You know, how did you come to this one thing of getting over achiever, high achiever syndrome and what you see? Why do people have that? So with that being said, let's discuss that last part right there. Why do you think people have high achiever syndrome? Where does that come from? so no matter what we're able to accomplish if we have this belief that we're not enough or if we have this unconscious belief that if i stop winning then i no longer matter or if we have this belief that if i let up it could just fall apart and it keeps us going and achieving and winning and striving and people on the outside will look at your life and say, this is incredible, you know, what you've accomplished.

5:04And you're like, yeah, it's amazing. But you know, what have I done lately? Or I still haven't achieved this goal. Or yeah, it looks great on the outside. But my wife is going to strangle me because I can't even go on a vacation because I can't relax enough. Because my mind's always worrying about the next thing I need to go fix. Right. And so it comes back to these beliefs in our mind. and not beliefs that we developed recently, but beliefs that we picked up in childhood, beliefs that we absorbed as a kid. So every time I work with somebody, even people that are like, no, that's not it. I had a good childhood.

5:40You know, I got a great mindset. This isn't about mindset. This is about deep unconscious programming. And so most of the people I'm working with have a fantastic mindset. It's not that, right? It's the deep unconscious just programming. And so every time I work with someone, we go back to try to figure out where that belief was formed. Because if we can kind of upgrade it at that moment where it was formed, then that's where you have the biggest breakthroughs and really fast. So people are going back to when they were four years old, seven years old, 12 years old. And they went through some experience where their brain is, you know, we're always trying to figure out what things mean and where brains always making up meaning.

6:20And so that's when most of our beliefs are formed by the time we're 18 years old. And so some of those beliefs are empowering, but some of them are also destructive. And that's what causes the imposter syndrome. It's what causes self-sabotage. It's what causes addictions. So it causes the bad habits we can't seem to kick. Right. And so so when we go back and we identify those situations and we find the beliefs and then we upgrade them, that's when magic, literally magic begins to happen for people. So how important is it? Because I know there's science around it, but I'd love to hear from you as a professional, like the importance of that zero, basically like zero to six age and how most of your beliefs and thoughts, ideas are formed in that period of time, which then science prove is what controls our everyday actions and our everyday actions comes from our everyday beliefs.

7:12Yeah, you're exactly right. You know, they say that by the time we're 18 years old, we've heard like hundreds of thousands of negative thoughts and, you know, and either coming at us or in our own mind. And, and we've seen all kinds of, you know, simulated murders and, you know, just saying, so, and now kids have growing up with social media, this generation, they've been exposed to things that they should definitely not be exposed to, you know, repeatedly. And so it's causing, yeah, it's causing a lot of, I mean, people are saying my four-year-old has anxiety now, right? Like what? That's not, But so, and it's not the anxiety.

7:53It's the feeling of not being good enough. Anxiety is a symptom. It's like a fire alarm that's going off, even though there's no fire. The cause is a belief that we're not good enough. And so where do you pick those beliefs up? Well, we pick them up when we're younger. And a lot of times we pick them up accidentally, right? So I'll give you an example. So there was a guy who was doing really well in his business, but he could not take it to the next level. He just felt stuck no matter. I went go this way. I go that way. You know, he hired coaches, didn't seem to make a difference. He'd get so far and then it would just seem to fall apart.

8:26So he came to me and what we did was we went back to the belief that might be causing this. And so he goes back to a memory of when he's six years old and his dad was a car guy. So his dad was always working on cars. So he goes back, he's six years old. His dad's working on this car. He's a six-year-old for a Phillips screwdriver. Now, the kid is six, right? And so he hands his dad the wrong thing. And his dad goes, you moron, you can't ever learn anything. Now, that wasn't very nice. And his dad probably wasn't thinking, I'm going to screw up my kid for the rest of his life. Yeah. Okay. But the kid's brain, you've got an authority figure, your father, something that scared him because the dad all of a sudden yells at you.

9:11That puts you in a hyper suggestible state. And then he gives you a suggestion, right? You can't learn anything. And all of a sudden that gets into his brain. And now he's, you know, 40 years old and he can't learn enough to get to the next level. And he can, but for order, in order for him to be successful, he would have to get rid of that belief because that belief is like a parking brake in his brain that he didn't know was there. And so he would continually sabotage himself because the belief has to match your reality. And so even if you change your reality, it won't, you got to upgrade the belief.

9:49I love that. I, I wanted to jump in there quickly just to say, okay, I want to break that down a little bit, right? Because you said he would self-sabotage. So someone with a belief of, uh, I can't learn, or I'm, I'm a moron, let's say, right. Uh, what, what are ways that that person would self-sabotage? Or what are ways that someone you would see going, ha, you're self-sabotaging yourself because of this. What would be showing up? Sure. So you might be getting really stressed out and then you lose your temper and then you take it out on your employees. Or you come home and you're afraid that you're not good enough.

10:29So you overcompensate by always trying to be in charge and in control. And then that causes a whole bunch of friction with you and your spouse. And now that's on your mind. and now you're going to work, but you're feeling like you should be at home saving your marriage. And then when you're at home, you feel like you should be at work saving your business, right? So that's a way of doing it. You're sitting up at three in the morning because you can't turn your mind off because you're worried about this situation and that situation and what's going to happen if this doesn't work. So then you're exhausted.

10:57Then you're missing meetings, right? It could be you got to get rid of the pressure and the stress. So now you're drinking, you know, now you're drinking just a beer, you know, and then all of a sudden it's, it's a couple of beers and then pretty soon you know it's like five or six beers you know every night you know or people are smoking weed or people are trying to drink energy drinks to push themselves harder because we got the youtube motivation of go harder do it do it do it right and so what that does is when you all of a sudden hit your 50s you have a big heart attack because you can't handle that pressure anymore yeah right and so worse we've seen worse when when, you know, men take their lives.

11:37So I'd even say worse than that. Yeah. It becomes heavy. That is, I see that more with the veterans, you know, with the veterans that I've worked with over the years. So more veterans die from suicide than from actually being in combat. And, uh, yeah, so it's, I mean, it's serious. And so you have the imposter syndrome, you have, uh, you know, you're creating a culture in your workplace environment. That's really stressful because you're always stressed out. Right. Or you're either You're communicating with people in a way where you're tearing them down, or you're not saying what you need to say and you're tearing yourself down, but you're not having those crucial conversations.

12:14And so you're not letting go of people that aren't good for you, or you're in a business with a partner who is sabotaging everything, right? Or embezzling money. And so there's a thousand different ways that we can sabotage ourselves if we don't feel that we're worthy or we don't know how to move forward with a heart at peace. Wow. That's a lot. But those are a lot of ways that people can self-sabotage themselves. So if that's happening in someone's business or even in their lives, is that an indication then that means, oh, there's something going on, you said, up in the software that probably needs addressing?

12:52Yes, exactly right. That's exactly right. Every time, it's a belief. There's an old saying that says, if you learn to go within, you'll never go without. So the answers are always inside of us. And a lot of times we're always going to the next coach, the next training, the next seminar, because we feel like we're missing all these pieces. But most of the time, we're not missing the pieces. We just don't trust ourselves enough to connect them inside. So how does someone build that trust? Like, say, if they have the syndrome of overachiever or not good enough or I'm, you know, the afraid of success or afraid of failure, imposter syndrome, those things, what I'm hearing from you would relate to them not being able to fully, completely, authentically trust themselves in their decision making.

13:40so how what would come first right like how do you trust yourself to make better decisions so that you don't feel like a imposter but making you feel like an imposter or making you know feel a failure of success or feel whatever i mean if you're a feel a fair oh my god fear of failure like that becomes to me kind of almost like a rat's nest here right a spider web of emotions of thoughts of subconscious and conscious living and beliefs, how through all of that can one even begin to trust themselves? Well, that's a brilliant question. And I felt the same way. It seemed like a big bowl of spaghetti noodles all mixed together.

14:22Turns out though, it's not, right? It's very linear. Okay. So if you have a row of dominoes, what a lot of people are doing, or they're taking a, you know, you got a row of dominoes and you're taking one out here and you're taking one out there, you know, and they don't, they all just keep getting messed up. And that's kind of what traditional therapy is like. Traditional therapy is using, you know, cognitive behavioral therapy, which is like positive thinking on steroids. And, and so you're trying to logically change a deep unconscious belief, and an emotional feeling. And so it's like cutting the top off of a weed, you know, you're not getting to the root.

14:56And then of course, using pharmaceuticals and alcohol and sugar and weed and all the other stuff we do, uh, porn, all the ways that we try to distract ourselves. Uh, that's like throwing dirt on top of the weeds. And so what you got to do is you got to pull the weed out at the root and plant it with, uh, replace it with flour, right. And empowering belief. I am loved. I am safe. I'm enough. I can do anything that I put my mind to. And when you believe that, then you can trust yourself. And then when you can trust yourself, you can trust others more. Right. And then that starts to create a new way of thinking, feeling, showing up, which then creates a new experience, new feedback that reinforces the new belief.

15:35So the first thing you do is you go back to the belief, the core belief that I'm not enough. And we upgraded at the source and I can walk you through how we actually do that. And then we, we upgraded at the source, we build a new foundation. And then all the other tools and mindset training and everything else will then work more effectively, because it's all great tools, but you got to have the foundation first and then you can build on top of it. So let's, I want to, I want to see how that is built. I want to go there, but before we do, I just want to understand a little bit more of the, of the playing field we have, because you brought it up twice now, like, like I'm going to call it traditional psychology.

16:15Let's call it traditional medicine, psychology, cognitive behavior. There's actually reports now. I I believe there's science. I'm not going to say that. I don't know if they're true. I haven't fact checked any of this, but I believe there's reports out there saying that actually therapy, traditional therapy is actually not great for you. It actually causes more depression because we're thinking and talking more about our problems instead of, I think, what you're saying, addressing the root of the problem and then coming up with a strategy to actually get rid of it. we're just all we're doing is actually watering it, fueling it, and it actually leading to negative impact versus positive impact.

16:51Have you heard anything like this? Are you familiar with this? I have. Yeah. And so there are great practitioners in every field and nothing works 100%. I think that therapy can be very beneficial because having someone to talk through your issue and share what's going on inside. I've had people come to me as an executive coach and they're like, I just want a place where I can dump my poison and trust that you're not going to tell anybody, right? Because they're very high profile situations. And so sometimes that can be very helpful because you just want to be able to unload and share. One of the problems that we have, especially as men, is that we just shove it down.

17:31We've been taught not to cry and shove it down. And that causes all kinds of health problems. You know, the body keeps the score. So, but you're right. Just talking about problems over and over doesn't really help. And if you're getting tools where you're trying to just look at a situation and reframe it differently, but you don't really believe it, or you're creating vision boards and you're telling yourself affirmations, but your mind is saying, yeah, you're full of crap. You know, this is not how it is. Then it causes more conflicts and it caught, and it can also cause you to feel worse because you feel like, you know, I'm doing all this stuff and I'm still not getting better, what's wrong with me?

18:10Why am I such a loser? Why am I such a failure? Or sometimes we get really hard on ourselves because we have somehow picked up the idea that if you really emotionally beat the crap out of yourself, it's going to somehow motivate you. And for most people, it's going to end up doing the exact opposite long-term. With all the people that you've worked with and what you see out there, I'm sure this is your profession, why do you think people are afraid to go within? Why do you think they're afraid to actually acknowledge, hey, maybe there is something from my zero to six or zero to 10, whatever, zero to 18, right?

18:44That is causing me to operate like this. I know some people don't even want to have that conversation. They don't even want to have, they're not even open to the idea of that conversation. And then there's people on the opposite side where it's almost It's like they're so open and they're working so hard that they're missing the mark of what's really going on. And they're using therapy as the pharmaceutical drug or something like that. Yeah, you get addicted to going to seminars and doing healing work. And then you start to get real metaphysical and you're into just the trip of it. But you're not your life isn't getting any better.

19:20You know, you've been to 37 seminars, but you're still your life's a train wreck. Right. And so that's really great. I love your question. So, you know, first, when the people are getting resistance, resistance is just a fear that somehow it could make things worse. Our brain is always trying to avoid pain. Right. But I have found over the years that your biggest breakthroughs are hiding in the places you don't want to go. So if you want to create a breakthrough, just look at the places where you're resisting and go there. And then all of a sudden you're going to start to experience leverage, motivation, momentum, you know, what we call a breakthrough.

19:55so um uh people are just either afraid or they don't understand so like you know being a hypnotist i wouldn't have never chosen it but it's worked so well over the last 30 years and it's not some weird magical state that people can go with some can do and some can't get into it's really brain science i mean everybody goes into hypnosis twice a day right before you fall asleep right before you get out of bed in the morning so it's just a natural state of mind where you're able to access your unconscious more effectively. But people see movies, they see stage shows, and they're like, you're not getting into my mind.

20:31Or, you know, are you going to, I've had people say, are you going to get in there and mess up my mojo? Because, you know, I need my brain. This is what's made me millions of dollars. I don't want you in there messing anything up. I'm like, that is not how it works. We're going to elevate your success and not just your wealth, but your inner wealth, right? Your health, your peace of mind, your marriage, your connection with your children, right? Your spiritual health. And so, so most people, but most people, the resistance is they think that somehow it would make things worse. A lot of guys, they don't want to slow down.

21:04They don't want to talk about feelings. They just want to go harder and go faster, right? They don't understand the power of aiming before you fire, right? They don't understand the power of, of having a new insight. It makes sense if you're solving problems like if you have a funnel or you want to increase conversion or something it makes sense to dig around test things you know try it out but if we do that internally people are like no wait a second like it's different so so i think it's a lack of of understanding yeah okay i maybe lack of understanding education uh and again i don't want to uh direct the conversation too much down this road.

21:43But the reality is, if everybody did this and everyone got the results of what this has, then what happens to the pharmaceutical world? What happens to all the people part of it that's feeding the negative, right? That gets shut down pretty quickly. So I'm wondering, that's probably why the education isn't there. Well, yes. I mean, we have a lot to say about our educational systems. We have a lot to say about, you know, and especially this country, we talk a lot about how our healthcare system, you know, are they, are they trying to keep us sick, you know, so that they can keep cashing in on us and things like that.

22:20There's always going to be your 20%, you know, who are your best clients, no matter what it is. And so, you know, the people who are ready are going to be the ones that step up. And those are the ones that you hear their stories and the testimonials and the breakthroughs. And then there's going to be a group of people, 20 % that are not your buyers and they're never going to be, and they're just going to keep going in circles, right? And then there's the people in between and those who, who that's who we're going after, right? With, uh, that's why we have shows like this show, like your show, right?

22:50You know, what you're doing is providing such an incredible service because you go beyond just showing people how to make money, right? You're the, by the questions you're asking me, you go much deeper to that because you care about making a difference. And so, you know, by, by having a show like yours and by having lots of podcasts and shows out there, there's thousands of them now. That's how we make a difference. It's a grassroots movement. I've always tried to do it as a bottom up instead of a top down. And so we're making a difference. Someone who's listening to this show, their life's going to change.

23:23I can't wait because we have I know we're just getting started on how we do this. So I'm excited. I wanted to add that comment because it was interesting. So you said it and I'll just make sure we nail it. The guys that come to you that are afraid that you're going to change their mojo and they go, oh, but I got to make money, right? They're missing the fact and the point that actually, if you do this work and you do it properly, you'll actually 10X your income. But that's not where even the fun begins. The 10Xing of your relationship to your wife, to your kids, to your employees comes to another level, which 10 X is your income, your relationship and your ability to connect spiritually, whether whatever it's God, I'm just going to say spiritually, because you trust and authentically love and are complete yourself.

24:16That alone is helpful to your ability to be creative and your ability to ask better and deeper, harder conversations, which then 10 X is your wealth. But men call wealth is their income. So it's interesting because that's why, well, what comes first? The surrender, which we didn't talk about, right? Or a fight towards trying to make it better. Yes. Well, what is surrender? Surrender is letting go of anything that's not serving you in a positive way and that's good for those around you as well. And so surrender is not losing and giving up and sacrificing. I like to have addition conversations, not subtraction.

24:59Most people in life are accidentally playing not to lose. We're constantly trying to not get hurt. I was just watching Bill Burr, the comedian on TV, and he has a new special that came out and he's standing outside the club. And he said, you know, it's funny because my whole life I've just been going to places where I could get the least amount of hurt. Right. He says, I like stand up comedy because I can stand in front of a group of strangers and get them all to like me. Right. And love me. And here's a famous guy who's afraid of being hurt. And so many celebrities, so many successful people that I've had the privilege of working with and and or watching their stories.

25:38It doesn't matter how much success you have. If you have never cleaned up those old wounds from the past, if you have those traumatic experiences, if you've been abused in different ways. You know, that's another reason why people don't want to open that closet door. They're afraid if I open it up, I won't be able to close it and a whole bunch of crap is going to come out and it's going to wreck my life. Right. That fear that it's going to get worse. It's never happened. And I've opened thousands and thousands of closet doors. And all that happens is that you heal. This stuff comes up and you heal it.