We Got the Gold Stars, But Lost Ourselves
What Happens When the Dream Job Isn’t the Dream Life
I originally titled this piece “The Lawyers Are Not Alright.” But pretty quickly, I realized: (1) well, duh and (2) this isn’t just about lawyers. It’s not even about career path.
It’s about people, really a specific kind of person, who spent their lives doing everything right, only to wake up and wonder why it still doesn’t feel like enough.
We’re the “gold star kids.” I’m talking about a subset of those of us born somewhere between 1978 and 1990. We were the zero-chill, overachieving early millennials. The ones who not only drank the achievement Kool-Aid, but probably helped mix it.
Let me be clear: I was born a nerd.
I genuinely love learning. I remember feeling so excited to receive my school workbook in first grade that I completed most of it over a single weekend. When my teacher, a nun at my Catholic school, found out, she made me erase every single page. I’m sure many of us experienced our natural love of learning being redirected or curtailed.
We were groomed early by the gold star system, sometimes with public poster board charts tracking our “excellence” in real time.
Real academic play ended somewhere around fourth grade. That’s the last year I can remember being allowed to learn simply for the joy of it.
For me, the need for validation came even earlier. I wasn’t raised by a tiger mom, but I had the Honduran equivalent: a puma dad. Add in my Pop-Pop, and I had a multi-generational performance coaching team. I got the A for Allie, and a plus for each of them.
It didn’t matter that an A++ didn’t actually exist.
Did I know how much they had sacrificed for me to be here? (Side note: it’s zero percent surprising that many of my closest friends are immigrants or the children of immigrants.)
For us, achievement wasn’t just encouraged. It was identity.
We weren’t just “smart kids.” By middle school, we were labeled “gifted and talented” and on the honor roll. Later came “advanced placement,” and, for some, “International Baccalaureate.” That one even sounded elegant, and vaguely European.
We accelerated everything. We took the PSAT in middle school and the SAT in sophomore year. We joined preparatory summer programs hosted by the universities we were taught to covet. Some of us even took real college classes during high school.
We collected accomplishments the way others collected Troll Dolls, Beanie Babies, or Magic: The Gathering cards. We were school newspaper editors, orchestra prodigies, team captains, and maybe even valedictorians.
We got into the Princeton Review-ranked colleges and landed jobs at prestigious institutions. Some of those jobs came helpfully ranked, too — hello, Vault Guide. We logged long hours and climbed the ladders. We became founders, partners, PhDs, VPs, and MDs (both kinds). We were busy, accomplished, always optimizing.
In the process, we became experts at putting off joy.
We worked late to secure the next promotion.
We brought laptops on vacations and bachelorette weekends.
We snapped at family members while trying to answer emails over Thanksgiving dinner.
We missed milestone birthdays, weddings, and funerals.
We postponed having children, telling ourselves the timing wasn’t right for work, only to later realize that our biological clocks, not our schedules or our company’s product road map, were the ones running short on time.
We replaced fiction with leadership books endorsed by Harvard Business Review.
We skipped leisurely meals with friends for intermittent fasting.
We gave up casual games in the park for grueling but optimized Barry’s Bootcamp classes.
Even our psychedelic experiments became productivity tools.
And now?
Now we sit in aspirationally Restoration Hardware-beautiful homes with impressive titles and quietly wonder: what do we do when the gold stars we’ve spent decades collecting start to lose their shine?
I want to say to all of us: it’s OK. We haven’t failed. We just confused accomplishment with joy. And it’s not entirely our fault. We learned that recognition, care, and belonging often came through achievement. But somewhere along the way, we forgot to ask ourselves what actually makes us happy.
That's where that icky, hollow feeling comes from: the growing awareness that we've been optimizing for the wrong metrics all along. Our spreadsheets balanced, but our souls didn't.
So what do we do now?
First, we must forgive ourselves. We’re not going to birth joy from shame.
Next, honor what we’ve learned. As much as we’ve ruthlessly executed, we’re not complete robots. A deeper part of us has been quietly taking notes on what feels good, and what doesn’t. Just like in meditation, where distraction is an invitation to return to the present moment, this disillusionment is an invitation to reconnect with an intention that’s more true to us.
To access that part, cultivate a regular practice of stillness or aimlessness. For me, that looks like meditation, qi gong or tai chi. For you, maybe it’s yoga, long aimless walks through the city or hikes in nature. Whatever brings you back to being.
Now, ask yourself: What do I really want?
Then, just listen. You might not get a clear answer right away. If your inner self just wants some peace and quiet (understandable!), let that be enough. Keep showing up for your own inner knowing.
The other day I was at an Iyengar Yoga class (love, btw) and we were about to practice handstands. Our teacher, Nick, could feel the buzzy anticipation within the group and could tell we just wanted to nail it. We all tried to launch and muscle our way up there. Nick interrupted us:
“Everyone stop. Next time, release the goal in the goal. Let go of the outcome, and just play around.”
Even though we became “gold star kids”, at some point we were just kids.
Remember the joy of just exploring? Riding around on bikes with friends until sunset, checking out the local spots just to see who was there and what was up? Inventing games or dares just for the thrill of it? Trying out handstands, and just goofing around? It didn’t matter if we tumbled over.
What if we brought back that sense of wonder, of aliveness, of curiosity?
What if we approached our careers, families, friendships, interests, and spiritual lives from that place?
As much as we may feel tempted sometimes, we don’t need to run away or burn it all down.
Forget the gold stars. What’s calling you?
P.S. If you’re looking for a practice to cultivate some peace and quiet, I’m hosting a donation-based 4-week online meditation series in May called The Bad Meditators Club. It’s low-key and designed for brains that don’t exactly default to calm. More info here.
I very much resonate with, "Whatever brings you back to being."
May we have the self-compassion to pause, breathe, turn inward, and remember ourselves.
What a great read Allie! Exactly that. Especially being the child of immigrants that work ethic was drilled into you and it's a hard cycle to break. Even now, we're a generation of hobbies by default becoming side hustles. There is such strong millennial burn out because of this.