Want greatness without requiring greatness to make you lovable.

There is a bargain many people make early without ever agreeing to it, where being worth loving depends on being remarkable. It produces a great deal of achievement and very little rest, because the requirement renews itself every day and no result ever fully settles it. You can want to do great work without that work carrying the question of whether you deserve affection.

Ask whether you would still want your goal if it made no difference to how anyone felt about you. Whatever survives that question is the part that is really yours. The rest is worth examining gently, since it usually started long before you had any say in it.