Tony Robbins once said, "Success without fulfilment is the ultimate failure."
I don't think I've ever heard a line that rings so true for business owners, who are always chasing more but are never quite fulfilled, or don't experience good feelings like love, joy and peace. At least not in abundance.
There are things they told themselves, years ago, would make them feel like they'd made it, and they've got that now. They've built the business, doing numbers that were once unfathomable in their head, they've got a team now, the car, the house...
And yet when we get talking, the same thing comes up again and again.
It still doesn't feel like enough.
The goalpost that keeps moving
You hit the number you'd been chasing for months and for a day, maybe two, it feels good.
Then the next number or goal appears.
And it's not all a bad thing, as it may have got you to this point now, but why live your life always chasing but never present or happy?
The gap opens back up again when you hit these targets and set a new baseline.
You tell yourself that once you get to the next level, then you'll be able to relax, again.
Then you'll be able to enjoy it. Then you'll be at peace.
But you've been saying "then" for years.
If you're honest, you already know that the next level won't change it either. Because you've already reached levels that the version of you from five years ago would have given anything for, and the feeling didn't follow.
It was never about the number
What did you think success was going to give you?
For a lot of people, if they go underneath the goals, it's something like:
- Proof that they're good enough.
- Safety, so they never have to feel how they felt growing up.
- Respect from someone whose approval they never quite got.
- Permission to finally rest.
What I've realised is most people think they are setting business goals for business purposes, but they're actually trying to fulfil needs. And those needs were usually formed long before the business existed.
So you go out and chase something external to meet something internal.
You work harder, you achieve more, and the need stays exactly where it was. Because the need was never in the bank account.
It was in the story you've been carrying about who you are and what you have to do to be enough.
You can't out-earn a belief.
Where it really shows up
The business is usually where people look first, but the place this tends to show up most is at home.
When you're at the dinner table, but you're not really there.
Your head is in tomorrow's meeting, the client who's not paid their invoice, the thing that might go wrong...
Your partner tells you about their day and you're nodding along, half listening.
Your kids want your attention and you give them what's left over.
You snap over something small, and later you can't even explain why.
You can't switch off on holiday, and you even check your phone in the bathroom so nobody sees. (I've heard it.)
You are someone who cares, so that's not the reason why you do these things. In fact, you're a bit unconscious of them, and the reason is because something inside you never feels safe enough to stop.
If you're always trying to get somewhere, you're never fully where you are, and the people closest to you feel that more than anyone.
That's the real cost.
Not the revenue you might be leaving on the table.
The moments you're physically present for but emotionally missing.
Nothing is wrong with you
I want to be clear about this, because a lot of people hear it and take it as one more thing they're getting wrong.
There's nothing wrong with you.
That drive got you here, and at some point it was the thing that kept you going when nothing else would. It made sense back then and it might even have protected you.
But a strategy that kept you safe at 12 isn't the one that brings you peace at 40. It's an old programme, still running, long after the situation it was built for has gone.
The problem isn't that you're ambitious.
It's that your ambition is coming from a place of not enough, rather than from a place of already enough.
Those two places can build the exact same business, but only one of them lets you enjoy it.
A different question
Most people ask, "What do I need to achieve to feel at peace?"
Try asking instead, "What do I believe I have to be, or prove, before I'm allowed to feel at peace?"
Sit with that for a minute.
Whatever comes up, notice something.
Recognise that the belief was handed to you.
You didn't sit down one day and choose it.
It got installed somewhere along the way, through what you saw, what you heard, and what you went through. And because you didn't choose it, you don't have to keep it.
What changes when it's gone
When that old programme is removed, the ambition doesn't disappear. And I understand that people worry about that, and they think if they stop feeling the pressure, they'll stop performing.
The opposite tends to happen.
You still want to grow.
But you're no longer building from a place of lack, it's done with a better energy.
You make clearer decisions, because they're not coming from fear.
You can celebrate a win and actually feel it.
You come home and you're there. Your partner gets you, not what's left of you.
Success stops being the thing that's supposed to fix you, and becomes something you get to enjoy.
That's the work I do. You've already got the drive. What I help you do is clear out what's underneath, so that what you've built finally feels like it's yours.
So here's the question I'd leave you with:
If you didn't have anything left to prove, who would you be?
If something in this landed for you, and you'd like to talk it through, you can book a free Breakthrough Call with me at derekelder.com/book-a-call.