Raven Had To Let Himself ‘Off the Hook’ Over Never Being WWE World Champion

Raven thinks he held himself to too high of a standard during his career, noting that he never felt like he was a success because he never became a world champion in WWE. The ECW legend had massive success in ECW, but he never found the same heights in the bigger pond that was WWE. He recently appeared on The Ariel Helwani Show and talked about how it was emotionally damaging to hang his yardstick for success on that high of a bar and that he has changed that mode of thinking for his own mental health. You can see some highlights below, per Wrestling Inc:

On trying not to be content with his spot in WWE at the time: “Yeah, I was really worried about that. Like, for the longest time, I didn’t think my career was a success because I wasn’t the world champion at WWE, which is really ridiculous. You know, I just held myself to such a high standard that, you know — but as my therapist said, you’re the one holding yourself to that standard. You can also let yourself off the hook, too, you know.”

On how his high standards proved harmful to his emotional health: “It’s kind of arrogant to think that you’re that, you know, that you think so highly of yourself that you have to be held to a higher standard. And that kind of triggered something with me and made me realize that you don’t have to hold yourself to a higher standard. Because if anybody else would have came up to me and said, ‘I don’t think my career is amazing,’ and it would have been what I’ve done [in] my career, I’d have said, ‘You’re insane.’ But because I held myself to a higher standard, as a lot of people that are successful do, you pay the price for it mentally, emotionally.”