Fear, envy, regret, or greed can keep you in the perpetual pursuit of success that does not bring personal fulfillment. Basic needs and emotional well-being are often compromised for wealth or recognition that yields temporary satisfaction at best.
Pursuing external success without inner well-being leads to emotional fatigue, burnout, and life dissatisfaction. Here’s why.
Successful people appear content, and high achievers are generally happier than people who struggle. However, success is not the cause of their well-being. It’s the outcome. The masses misinterpret this relationship between well-being and success.
The link between well-being, happiness, and success is complex. According to research, well-being positively affects success, but not the other way around. Career success contributes little to well-being. Instead, when we fine-tune our hearts and minds, success comes with more ease. When we see high achievers, we don’t see the fine-tuning. We only see their success.
The Career Trap
Six, seven, and eight-figure earnings make you a high achiever, but it doesn’t make you happy. That reality has been tested time and time again. But people must see for themselves.
Across professions and socioeconomic status, people use their careers as an identity in search of happiness. Their job titles become who they are instead of what they do. People build lives around their careers based on earnings, fame, or power potential in hopes that it will also bring them fulfillment. That can happen, but it rarely does.
Success enhances what you have within. Pursuing success in the absence of well-being will not grant you well-being. If your well-being is secondary to your career, you are at risk of being perpetually dissatisfied.
Success provides more resources to hide pain, but it is not an elixir. Just because pain is unseen doesn’t mean it’s unfelt. Biographies of famous people often verify that emotional distress is an unwavering companion to success.
If your well-being is secondary to your career, you are at risk of being perpetually dissatisfied.
Will Smith and Viola Davis’s autobiographies are two of my favorites that make this point. What people see of them and what they feel inside couldn’t be more conflicting. No amount of success could make them heal themselves.
Both actors reveal meaningful relationships with therapists to address the pain that followed them from childhood into their careers. Their stories confirm success is no match for unaddressed pain. Pain reveals its power in due time.
There is also power in resilience where survivors of adverse experiences become alchemists and turn unresolved pain into a passion that produces excellent career achievements. Accomplishments that reflect expertise and purposefulness give strength — and take it away.
Success does not leave you drinking yourself to sleep every night or partying all night to avoid feeling your discontent. It does not leave you bitter and alone or afraid of abandonment. It leaves you the way it found you.
Unfortunately, accomplishments can make us cling tighter to career identities. Rather than growing into authenticity and transparency, successful people often grow deeper into their titles and roles. The higher you achieve, the more tempting it is to define success based on your accomplishments.
The insatiable thirst for achievement is a theme of Will Smith’s autobiography. Each record-breaking film left him wondering what would have given him bigger success. Despite outperforming everyone in the film industry at one point, he wanted more — money, fame, and recognition.
There are not enough accolades to make up for a heart shattered since childhood. Nothing is enough when you don’t feel like you are enough.
The struggle for success can augment its value, as demonstrated in the Viola Davis autobiography. The more you struggle for career recognition, the stronger your identity with it, and the more likely you will define success by it. You sacrifice everything for one thing. Your efforts intensify your desire for success and vice versa.
Nothing is enough when you don’t feel like you are enough.
Davis struggled in her career for many years, which she attributed to her appearance. When many of her peers gave up, her unwavering efforts were tied to her fear of failure. Eventually, she became highly successful. However, inevitable fame and fortune did not heal the holes in her heart.
When it comes to the relationship between success and well-being, the writing is on the wall. Not literally, but it’s on the pages. Biographies of the rich and famous remind us of the limitations of success. Will Smith and Viola Davis are just two examples of ultra-achievers who confess that inner struggles forced them to redefine or expand their definition of success.
Success does not leave you drinking yourself to sleep every night or partying all night to avoid feeling your discontent. It does not leave you bitter and alone or afraid of abandonment. It leaves you the way it found you.
Success is a Good Diversion
It’s not just the rich and famous who define success by career achievement. Managers, administrators, and CEOs cling to their work identities. When work is going well, they feel well. When work isn’t going well, they don’t feel well.
Insomnia, over-eating, depression, and anxiety take over when budgets are cut, employees under-perform, or deadlines aren’t met. Of course, these are serious issues. But they are not personal issues. They are work issues. You show up every day and do the best you can. Sometimes you fall short of reaching your goal.
When you fall short of your goal, you should not fall short of self-love, self-appreciation, or self-care. On the contrary, where there is self-love, appreciation, and care, there is also self-compassion. You have invested enough in yourself to sustain emotional well-being during life’s storms.
While some people use careers to define success, others use alternative statuses, such as relationships. Being the best parent of the best child or the perfect wife is an identity as strong as a CEO. Rather than a personal identity with achievement, some people’s achievement is attached to those they love. The outcome is the same.
