The Pressure to Succeed

Photo by African Student Association on Unsplash

By Victor Jacob

At some point, “What do you want to become?” stops being a childhood question.

It has become a deadline.

You are expected to know what you want to study, where you want to work, how much you should earn, and when you should become independent.

Soon, the questions change.

• When are you graduating?

• Have you found a job?

• What are you doing now?

• When will you start making money?

For many young Africans, growing up can feel less like discovering who you are and more like proving that you are making progress.

There is nothing wrong with wanting a good life. Everyone wants and deserves one.

Young people become ambitious, and that is to be expected. They want meaningful careers, financial stability, and opportunities to build better lives for themselves and their families.

The problem begins when achievements become a measurement of worth. A university student can feel like they are failing because someone in their class already has a business. A graduate can question their abilities because months of job applications have produced nothing. Someone who is still figuring out their career may feel behind when friends are announcing promotions, new businesses, relationships, travel, or relocation.

The achievements are real. So is the pressure they create.

Social media makes this harder because success is no longer something we hear about occasionally. It can appear on our screens every day. We see the announcements. We rarely see everything that came before it. We see the new job but not the rejected applications. We see the business but not the failed ideas. We see the relocation but not the uncertainty that came with starting again somewhere else.

Comparison can turn someone else's visible progress into evidence against our own invisible struggles.

Our youth should understand that everyone has his or her own growth phase: nobody should be under pressure to succeed.

Across many African communities, success is rarely viewed as an individual matter. Family can be part of the equation. For some young people, there is an expectation to become financially independent and eventually support parents, siblings or other relatives. This can be especially difficult when families have made significant sacrifices to give their children opportunities they did not have themselves. At the same time, many young Africans are navigating limited job opportunities, rising living costs, and economies that do not always create enough opportunities for a growing youth population.

This creates a difficult expectation: Make something of yourself, but make it quickly.

For someone who is unemployed after graduation, still searching for direction or unable to meet the expectations placed on them, this pressure can become deeply personal. It can feel like everyone is waiting for you to “make it.”

And when you have not yet done so, you may begin to wonder whether you are the problem.

Pressure can sometimes push people forward.

Too much of it can do the opposite.

A young person who believes they must constantly prove themselves may find it difficult to rest. A failed application may feel like a judgement on their ability. Changing direction may feel like wasting time. Asking for help may feel like weakness.

Eventually, the pursuit of success can become so consuming that the person forgets why they wanted success in the first place. What is the point of building a career if there is no room for a life outside it? What happens when becoming “successful” requires constantly convincing yourself that you are not behind?

These are not arguments against hard work. They are questions about what we are asking young people to sacrifice in the name of achievement.

The solution cannot simply be telling young people to stop comparing themselves with others. That places the responsibility entirely on the person experiencing the pressure while ignoring the environment producing it.

Parents can encourage their children without making achievement the condition for approval.

Schools and universities can create spaces where failure, uncertainty and career changes are treated as part of learning rather than as shameful experiences.

Employers and institutions can create opportunities for young people to gain experience instead of expecting them to arrive fully prepared.

Communities can also stop treating every young person's life as a race with the same finish line.

Young people themselves can learn to define progress in ways that are not entirely dependent on what other people are doing.

A person can be ambitious and still need rest. A graduate can be capable and still be unemployed. Someone can change careers without having wasted their previous years. Someone can take longer to find their direction without being behind.

Perhaps we need to ask better questions.

Instead of only asking a young person, “What have you achieved?”

We can ask: What have you learned? What are you building? What are you struggling with? What support do you need? What kind of life are you trying to create?

These questions do not remove ambition. They give it context.

Young Africans deserve opportunities to succeed, but they also deserve the space to make mistakes, change direction, rest, and ask for help without feeling that they have failed at life.

At Shades of Us, we believe conversations about young people's experiences matter because the pressures placed on them are not created by young people alone. They are shaped by families, institutions, communities, and the expectations we collectively choose to uphold.

The goal should not be to make young people less ambitious. It should be to build societies where ambition does not require them to lose themselves. Because a young person's life is more than a list of achievements. And progress should be measured by more than how quickly they arrive.