Ep. 84 - Why High Achievers Feel Empty

Why high achievers feel empty even when the business is working: you built this so you'd finally feel free, and now you're working 51 hours a week, and it still feels hollow.

If the days don't feel like your own anymore even though everything's technically fine, you're not imagining it. This video breaks down why the usual advice, stay and grind or leave and burn it down, misses the real shift most high achievers actually need.

Keywords
 why high achievers feel empty, founder identity, high achievers psychology, achievement addiction, success but no fulfillment, entrepreneur identity, founder burnout, high performing founder, entrepreneur mental health, successful but unfulfilled, business fulfillment, leadership, personal growth, entrepreneurial success, work-life balance, self-awareness, business alignment


Key  topics

The difference between hustle and alignment
Signs of misalignment in business and life
The impact of unfulfillment on health and relationships
The importance of shifting who you serve and how you operate
Recognizing when it's time for a leadership upgrade


 Takeaways

Success can amplify feelings of emptiness if misaligned.
Bigger revenue doesn't necessarily mean more fulfillment.
Signs of misalignment include feeling drained, heavy, or outgrown.
Shifting who you serve and how you lead can restore fulfillment.
 Operating from alignment involves letting go of attachments to success stories.


 Sound bites

"The experience of hustle versus alignment."
"Pour your life force into what energizes you."
"Life keeps moving regardless of what you do."


Click to Read or Watch on Substack 

Transcript

Makhosi Nejeser (00:38.37)
You built this so you'd finally feel free. Now you're working 51 hours a week and somehow it still feels empty. The real problem is that the work doesn't feel alive anymore. You're not being pulled out of the bed. You're really just pushing and forcing to make the next milestone happen. Your client calls feel

draining. Even part of you dreads having to hop on another call. The team feels heavy whenever payroll comes around. And part of you wonders, what am I even paying people for when I am still so heavily invested in my time and my energy and growing this thing? Feels like I'm doing everything myself.

Most experts give you two options, either stay and hustle, chase the next goal, or leave and burn it all down. But there's a third option, and that's what we're going to discuss in this video. Now, a lot of the misunderstanding around why high achievers feel empty

really hinges on the idea that you're doing too much. You're just simply working too many hours. And occasionally that's true. However, the real issue isn't the time itself. It's not the hours. It's that the time being poured into the business doesn't feel alive anymore. There's a huge difference in impact and experience and feeling.

when you are having to force yourself to do what needs to be done versus being pulled towards the creation of what's trying to come through you.

Makhosi Nejeser (02:52.94)
That is the key difference between the experience of hustle and the experience of alignment.

The other issue is that even though the business can work on paper, everything makes sense. It starts to feel like the work that is yours isn't for you to be doing anymore. That there's something more, there's something else trying to come through you.

It starts to feel like you're executing on a version of the business that used to be you, and now part of you has outgrown it.

Makhosi Nejeser (03:50.937)
Now, most of the conversations center on how to make a successful business, but there's very little information about this issue when the business isn't failing. When it's actually succeeding, it's profitable, it's getting results, and you're still feeling like this. Most of the solutions just center on you just need another zero, you just need another goal in order for this to

light you up again.

Makhosi Nejeser (04:28.45)
But if your business were failing, this wouldn't really be the video that you were watching. Instead, you would be watching something about how to attract more leads, how to convert more people, how to market on social media. The experience of it feeling empty is something that is unique.

typically once you hit a certain level of success. So the evidence here, you can't determine whether this is a determiner of success or not by the revenue.

bigger numbers does not necessarily equal a fix to this problem. And in fact, what I've seen sitting across from hundreds of founders is that often bigger numbers just amplify the feeling of emptiness and a lack of fulfillment.

The biggest evidence that you want to pay attention to is the texture of the days. It's the experience of how it feels in the moment. It's the difference between spending 51 hours a week when your team was supposed to buy back your time, or maybe it looks like charging a fifth of what you know the work is worth.

These are where we start to see indicators that something is misaligned here.

Makhosi Nejeser (06:14.316)
Now, often one of the biggest traps that I see for high achieving founders is that once you've achieved a certain level of success, the pressure to stay in what you're doing looks like a team that is dependent on you and needs you to continue pouring in in order for them to have their livelihood. It also looks like clients

and an audience who trust you and wants to receive the outcomes that you're creating for them or the products that they're receiving from you. And even your reputation, because you worked damn hard in order to get to this place and sacrificing your reputation to start back at zero feels almost like death. But

These are not reasons to allow yourself to stay trapped. Because when you operate from what's truly aligned for you, that ultimately ends up being what is in everyone's best interest. Even if this is the story that's keeping you in this experience of misalignment.

Makhosi Nejeser (07:34.529)
A team that is relying on a version of you that you've outgrown isn't a reason for you to just quit on them. But it is a signal that it's time for your role to shift. Who you are as a leader is ready for an upgrade. And often that looks like you letting go of all of the things that you're attached to that you think

make you successful, you think make you a good leader, and instead shift into a role of more curation and cultivation, creating an environment that actually allows for other people to take ownership and to expand in their own potential. It means you get to stop being the bottleneck.

Makhosi Nejeser (08:35.906)
This may also be manifesting in your clientele and your loyalty to the clients that you've attracted over the years. I once had a client who had a vision board of the most incredible, most well-known celebrity clientele, and she actually created that business.

She had some of the most visible celebrity clients that is literally everyone's dream come true. And part of her felt this emptiness.

The challenge with that is it feels like a betrayal to your past self to let go. And simultaneously, you worry about like, does this look ungrateful or even crazy? Because here I am doing what anyone else would imagine is the dream. And somehow it doesn't feel like it's enough.

This is usually just a sign that these are the wrong clients for who you've become. And it doesn't always mean you have to get rid of your clients. Often allowing yourself to shift in the way that's true for you ultimately invites them to evolve as well. It invites them to evolve in the relationship and in how they're seeing the world and how they are interacting with you and your team.

Makhosi Nejeser (10:20.824)
The thing that I want you to really take away from this conversation is that the emptiness that you're feeling is usually not a call to burn it down. The pressure to burn it down usually comes after many years of avoiding the truth that something about what you created is misaligned. It's simply a sign that something

needs to shift. And that could be who it serves, how you're showing up, and what you are no longer willing to do yourself.

Makhosi Nejeser (11:06.924)
I sat across from founders who were holding on to this knowing for years. In fact, usually it's like three to five years of knowing that what they've created is not really sustainable for who they are becoming. And you need to understand that every month that you hold on past that moment has a cost.

You see, the mistake that we make is we look at all of the things that we have to lose. We look at the revenue, we look at the lifestyle, we look at the reputation, the clients and the audience, and we're terrified that if we change anything, that if we choose differently for ourselves, that all of that is going to be lost.

But there's an insidious cost that is harder to see and sometimes harder to measure. In the upcoming weeks, I'm going to be diving into specifically what those costs are that you aren't seeing.

But as just a brief overview, you've got to think about how much energy and your capacity is being spent in places that drain your life force energy. And on the flip side, what could be created if you were actually pouring that life force into something that was true, something that gave you energy

Makhosi Nejeser (12:54.155)
It also takes a toll. has a weight on your closest relationships because when you are unfulfilled and empty in your life's work, that ends up filtering over into your relationship with your spouse, your children, your parents, your friends, et cetera. So rather than getting the best of you, they become kind of like a

dumping ground for your unhappiness.

There's also a resentment that starts to build over time towards the clients and the team that you genuinely care about, right? So these are people who you have some level of loyalty and some level of attachment to. But holding on to doing things in a way that isn't true for you builds resentment to them over time.

And lastly, most people never talk about the actual physical toll that it takes, the insomnia, the exhaustion, the illnesses that come about as a result of operating this way for an extended period of time. And repeatedly, what I say happens and I see happen is that it usually

requires a catalytic event for you to take it seriously. It usually requires that the pain gets so severe that now it culminates in like a health scare for you or a loved one. Or maybe it looks like you losing someone that's close to you and rethinking and reckoning with what your life looks like.

Makhosi Nejeser (14:59.638)
It usually does require that something forces the tipping point.

Makhosi Nejeser (15:11.896)
So most often the objection that I hear around, well, why should I pursue fulfillment? If it's still working, why change anything? And if you go to, you know, most business coaches or most strategists, they're really, really good at wanting to amplify and scale what you already have.

So if you go to them, most of them will not encourage you to change anything significantly because it's working. So they want to put fuel on it because their reputation is on the line as well. And they want you to succeed. The easiest way for them to succeed is to grow what you already have, not to question if it's actually true, if it's actually sustainable. And so...

What I want you to recognize is that what usually needs to shift is not getting rid of the entire business. It's usually not having to exit in order to have more fulfillment in the day-to-day experience. Most founders actually who end up exiting find that

they regret. In fact, the statistic is 72 % of founders who exit end up regretting and it takes them on average two to three years to find their footing in the next chapter. The more common thing that I do see happen is burning down and then starting something completely new from scratch. And often that doesn't solve the issue. They just end up building

something else that's also misaligned because it wasn't really about what you do. It's usually about who you are serving. So who you are co-creating with and that experience of energy exchange that you have with those people. It could also be in how you're showing up. So I recently went through a transition of this myself and in realizing that

Makhosi Nejeser (17:35.982)
This next era for me requires that I operate more from the philosopher's standpoint and building like an intellectual house versus seeing myself more as like an influencer and sharing my lifestyle and all of those things, which did not feel true to me. And all of these are kind of harder to admit than I should be.

I should quit, I should just burn it all down, start something new, and there's not a clean exit that you can point to. It's a little bit more challenging to even explain to your partner when the two of you are pillow talking at the end of the night, right?

What I want you to really consider and reflect on is that life is going to keep moving regardless of what you do. The market is going to change and it's going to keep shifting. Your kids are going to keep growing up. Your parents are going to age faster than you expected. And what you have been calling fear, fear of losing it all, was not really about fear.

It was really an alarm. An alarm that keeps getting louder the longer that it rings. So if that alarm has been ringing for you and you don't yet have a name for what it's pointing at yet, I want to encourage you to subscribe to my Substack. You'll find the link below because this is the exact conversation that we're going to continue having in the upcoming weeks and months.

So if this resonated, be sure and share with me what came up for you. What questions do you have around why you're experiencing this phenomenon and what that really means. Until next time.