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Actor Jason Segel explains why successful people never really feel successful

Jul 27, 2015, 20:58 IST

Imeh Akpanudosen/Getty Images

Jason Segel is an accomplished actor who has starred in smash hits ranging from "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" to "How I Met Your Mother."

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To most people, he's a success. But Segel says he doesn't always feel like one.

Segel's latest role is a serious one. He plays an author who spends five days being interviewed by a journalist (Jesse Eisenberg) in an upcoming film, "The End of the Tour."

GQ's Zach Baron interviewed Segel about his new movie and asked the actor asked about his accomplishments.

Even though Segel has worked hard and achieved a lot, Segel says he doesn't feel much different than he did nine years ago, when he started filming his hit sitcom "How I Met Your Mother."

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"You put your heart and soul [into something], and it comes out, and it does as well as it can possibly do," Segel explained to Baron. "And then you realize that you feel the same. Like, 'Oh, shouldn't this ten years of incredibly hard work and achievement have made me feel different?'"

Successful people, Segel says, are rarely satisfied even if they reach their goals. They just keep setting the bar higher and higher for themselves.

"I don't think you ever feel like, 'I've gotten there,' he says. "I think the dangling carrot keeps moving. Part of human nature is this masochistic instinct to constantly narrow the criteria of success so that you're just outside of it."

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