The void success can't fill

Success is a funny thing. You spend years chasing after it, thinking it’ll make you whole. But then you get there, and you find it isn’t enough. That’s where I am right now, sitting in my bedroom, staring at the walls, trying to make sense of this feeling.

I’ve struggled to work on my business for reasons I won’t get into. The challenges I overcame to reach my current level of success aren’t the ones I need to overcome to reach the next. And unfortunately, I find myself wanting to overcome something else. That’s not to say I’m done with my business because I’m not. But it feels as though something is missing–a creative itch that’s not getting attention.

I believe this emptiness comes from the combination of two ideas:

First, humans have a minimum level of stress. Morgan Housel wrote a fantastic article called Minimum Levels of Stress. You should read it. In it, he says:

In the absence of big problems, people shift their worries to smaller ones. In the absence of small problems, they focus on petty or even imaginary ones.

In other words, when our problems disappear, we invent new ones to fill the void.

Secondly, the problems you face while reaching higher levels of success become smaller the further you climb. Eventually, these problems become so small they have little to no effect on you. This leaves you with a feeling of emptiness that is so subtle I doubt many people have identified it as a problem. But it is. It’s a new kind of problem, but a problem nonetheless. It’s the kind of problem that doesn’t become a problem until you’ve reached high enough levels of success.

I know. I know. “Boo-hoo! That poor, successful person doesn’t have commoner problems. Sucks to be them.” But yes, it does! Few people know what to do when their familiar problems disappear when they’re faced with new, imaginary problems that snuck into the void. The first remedy is awareness. Realize that these new problems don’t mean you’re weak, but that instead, you’re inexperienced with a new type of problem: having to choose.

The problems you overcome to reach success are the very things that give meaning to it. When you reach higher levels of success, you must be intentional about what types of problems you choose to focus on next. Otherwise, imaginary problems start to creep in, imaginary problems that do not have an answer, imaginary problems that can never fill the void.