The Trouble with Trying to Measure Up

How our anxious need to impress can rob us of joy.

See section below for news on my forthcoming book! But first, this reflection:

Most of us, thank goodness, have long since graduated from getting report cards. While I got good marks, a recurring comment from grade-school teachers was “Tim doesn’t listen well to instructions.” (Maybe that’s still not a strong point for me.) I didn’t stress too much about my grades, even in high school, but I’m becoming more aware of how much I still worry about expectations. I’ve traded letter grades for more creative ways to get anxious.

If I’ve had one recurring dream as an adult, it’s this: I’m about to lead a worship service for a church full of people—and things are already unraveling. The details change, but the chaos appears as a constant thread: I can’t find my sermon notes, or my copy of the worship bulletin has mysteriously disappeared, or I’m running late—really late.

You can imagine the growing panic I feel in this sleep nether world. I always wake up relieved. Among pastors, what I’m describing takes place so commonly it has a name: the “preacher’s dream.”

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Of course, other professions have their own versions. Accountants dream a ledger won’t balance. I’m sure the same thing plagues others: teachers, parents, lawyers, researchers, sheriffs, secret agents, parents.

And service workers—phone order takers, auto mechanics! They can’t seem to do their jobs without a survey looming over them. When a poor rating hangs like a threat, does that, too, appear in their dreams? More than one has said to me, “Anything less than a 10 out of 10 means I haven’t done my job.” I can’t help but feel for them—working as if their skill and care can be boiled down to a number.

I think these examples all point to our commonly felt pressure to measure up. To be sure, we want people we turn to do good work. We love the satisfaction of doing our own jobs well. That way beats out failing in public! There’s nothing wrong (and much right) with producing something useful or beautiful.

Not letting status anxiety get the better of me

But I’m sensing something else at work around us and in us. We let our day’s pursuits and our standing (what some call status anxiety) boil down to a test—given by others. Accomplishing good things or hitting work goals gets turned into a referendum on our worth. Performance reviews, the annual evaluations common in many jobs, carry this sense of someone watching us perform.

We can lose the joy. We may burn out.

Might this reality have something to do with more people than ever feeling deflated or depressed? The stats point to a measurable rise: The World Health Organization cites depression and burnout as our fastest-growing health problems.

Lots of things contribute to our feeling down, of course: heart-rending news headlines, setbacks in our relationships, financial struggles. And to be clear: Some of us have brain chemistry imbalances that trace to genetics. Depression has an array of causes and compounding reasons.

But I’ve recently been struck by a likely source: That sense I mentioned that we have somehow failed to live up to all we’re supposed to become. The pressure to measure up, to make the most of our lives. Our prove-your-worth society can make us feel like we don’t quite cut it. Or we become, as one executive coach put it, achieve-oholics, always thirsting for one more accomplishment to establish our indispensability.

This tendency can go back in our lives—way back. I still get affected some days from what I learned in my household when growing up: Family members oohed and ahhed at recognition and awards. Not just at school, either. I’m not sorry I got my Eagle Scout rank from Boy Scouts—I learned things as I earned what they called “merit badges.” I am grateful I know the difference between a square knot and a granny knot or how in an instant to spot poison ivy. Having goals and tasks and trying hard all have a place. But I also felt what I did as a weight, a compulsion to prove my value— to demonstrate my merit through badges.

Something more is possible, thank God. We can care about more than affirmation from peers, friends, parents. We can live for more fulfilling goals than meeting others’ standards. For we also need the re-orientation that comes from spiritual sources. A more enduring basis for self-worth.

“Am I loved?” is the question running under the anxious urgency to wow others or get applause. Our wisest spiritual mentors caution against the insecurity that drives workaholism and achievement anxiety—the need to make one more good impression.

A secure, settled conviction that we already are loved more than we can fathom makes the difference here. Loved by people in our lives, yes. But ultimately I mean a higher love.

This surety about our belovedness does not come from something we earn but from someone who can grant it. The Christian faith for this reason talks a lot about mercy and abundant graces.

Do you live with the pressure that comes from a restless need to self-improve, and well, prove something to your Maker? Or you worry; you experience “the embarrassment of a Christian I knew myself to be,” as Kate Gaston put it wryly. “The final letdown in a long line of letdowns, and God was up there somewhere, shaking his head in mild, paternal disappointment.”1

A gift, not a transaction

The assurance of God’s affection for us comes as a gift, not a transaction. If we start with our belovedness in God, we see something clearer about our identities: We are not our job titles, bank accounts, or volunteering efforts. We don’t truly measure life by the accomplishments we throw on a résumé to sound like we’ve got everything in hand, right on schedule, thanks very much. What others think doesn’t become the final arbiter.

What we need is not brazen self-reliance, then, but a chastened openness. And love makes this possible, makes us freer. God’s love, we see, does not so much measure us as treasure us. Divine love frees us from a compulsion to be all. Here, mercy overcomes our worries over having let God and others down. Grace, as David Zahl likes to say, is the big relief.

Doesn’t it help to know how busy God’s already been with this question of love? Like for all eternity—forwards and backwards. Our work (and our worth) participates in what the triune God of love started—before time, through all ages. There we see an invitation, not a competition. We delight in our knowing that God not only made us, but also keeps us and our world. We see the freedom and possibilities of that grand start.

And then we think of pleasing another—a divine Other, caring about what God wants and thinks. There is a place for working hard. Paul the apostle wanted the followers of Jesus under his care to “live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work” (Colossians1:10).

Living to please God? Here is a calling worth a lifetime of work! And it means we care less about impressing others, and more about loving and honoring God. That shift affects our center of gravity. It moves us from anxious restlessness to a deep settledness. We still do our work, but with an assurance that seems to change everything. That makes us all the more able to do good things.

1 Kate Gaston, “The Martyr in the Mundane,” Ecstatic, March 30, 2025, https://ekstasismagazine.substack.com/p/the-martyr-in-the-mundane.

And now, news on my book (due out in March):

Endorsements have been coming in, and these words do so well at capturing what I’ve been hoping and praying this book will do:

“In Fully Beloved, Tim Jones hits the heart—naming the ache of loneliness and our lifelong quest for belonging.” –Sandra McCracken, singer and songwriter

“This profoundly moving book is one I savored, and you will, too.” —Jeff Crosby, author of The Language of the Soul and World of Wonders

“This is rich material, richly told.” –Philip Yancey, author of What’s So Amazing about Grace?

“Tim Jones has done something remarkable. Fully Beloved explores the possibility of a loving God who meets us where we are in each moment of our lives. … With intensely personal stories, Jones helps us to see our interaction with the Holy Trinity as a vital and relatable relationship.” —David Bannon, author of A Hope Observed and Wounded in Spirit

Tim JonesSeptember 22, 2025