[hjay]

I also had a problem with being "overly ambitious" early on in my life. Any satisfaction gained from being first in anything quickly died off, while placing 2nd gave me nightmares constantly and made me hate myself for it. I recently wrote a blog post about it [1].

Luckily, I was thrown into a foreign country where I was able to feel failure every single day at school until I was no longer overly resistant to it.

[1]: http://www.jayhuang.org/blog/the-cost-of-underselling/