20. Breaking the addiction to business growth

In this episode, we're talking about the endless quest for 'more, more, and more' growth and how our pursuit of business growth can actually function like an addiction.

Listen to hear more about:

• Why business growth can literally work like an addictive drug — complete with tolerance, withdrawal symptoms, and that never-ending need for a bigger hit
• How you know if you've crossed the line from healthy ambition into something destructive
• The unmet emotional needs that usually drive this whole cycle 
• Practical strategies for getting off the treadmill without abandoning your ambitions entirely

Discover how to break free from the cultural narrative that equates your worth with your output, reconnect with what actually nourishes you, and find the kind of growth that makes you more of who you are instead of less. 

Transcript

You are listening to Liberatory Business and I'm your host, Simone Seol. Thank you so much for listening.

So let me ask you a question: How much growth is enough? When does business growth stop? How do we find fulfillment when we're chasing business growth? And what is actually happening when, despite the fact that some of us have grown and yet don't feel fulfilled?

What's also happening when the more people grow, the more some of these people feel scared, anxious, panicked? A friend of the podcast asked if I could address this question in the podcast—like, how much growth is enough and how do you kind of deal with always feeling like you have to have more and more and more growth. And I know that this friend who asked is not the only person who's thinking about this, so I thought it would be a great topic of discussion for this podcast.

So let's get right into it.

I believe that business growth can function essentially like an addictive drug. There's no other way to account for the fact that yes, those who are in the beginning stages of growing their business can be stressed out. Many are. But some of the most stressed out, frazzled, disconnected people that I know that I've seen are those who have already achieved the kind of external growth that many people would kill for, that they themselves would have killed for in the past.

Some of the people that I know who spend the most money on business courses, buying one program after another after another, vying for one expensive mastermind after another, and then don't necessarily feel fulfilled by any of it, are those who already have a business that basically works. At some point, even a healthy pursuit can turn into a kind of addiction.

And this is what it looks like when you are caught in an addictive cycle. Think about how drug addiction works. And I know it's a strong claim to say business growth can be like a drug, but bear with me. Let me make my case for you.

The problem with drug misuse isn't just the substance itself—it's that it gets you hooked on the hit, right? That rush, that euphoria, that temporary high that makes everything else unpleasant fade away. But here's the bad part, right? When you're sober, when you're not getting that rush, you feel lower than before that, and all you can think about is the next hit. You get obsessed. Thinking about the next hit consumes your thoughts, your energy, your focus. And when you can't get it, when your supply runs dry, you get anxious, jittery, depressed, panicky, manic, angry. These are withdrawal symptoms, right?

And then there's the question of tolerance, because your body adapts to the drug, right? Your body kind of adapts to the continued hits and what used to be enough to get you high and feeling good suddenly isn't enough anymore. You need a continuously bigger and bigger and bigger dose to get the same effect. The bar keeps rising.

And here's where it gets interesting. Addiction to business growth works exactly the same way. You made a sale, you got a hundred followers, you got five people in your group. You're seeing those numbers go up. When you see that, it feels like that big hit. You get that euphoria, you get that high, it makes all the other problems just fade into the background. You feel amazing. And then you come back down to reality.

And then you get the discomfort of sobriety. When you're not getting those hits of those wins, you're not seeing those sales hit your bank account, you are not seeing the engagement on your socials, your stuff is plateauing, you're not seeing those numbers go up—then you're going to withdraw, right? All you can think about is how can I get the next hit? How do I get the next milestone, the next achievement, the next tangible evidence of growth? And then that's all you can think about. You obsess over it. It consumes your thoughts, your energy, your focus.

And again, just like with drugs, you start building a tolerance. What used to be enough—this amount of sales, this amount of recognition, this amount of engagement, this amount of creative fulfillment—suddenly isn't enough anymore. You need more. You need more sales, you need more attention, more engagement, higher revenues. You need, want, need to scale more, more followers, bigger deals, bigger this and that. The dose has to keep increasing to get the same effect.

And when you can't get your fix, no matter what you do, you experience withdrawal. And over time, as the withdrawals become more and more painful, you find yourself subtly compromising your values. You are willing to try marketing strategies that honestly feel a little bit gross to you, or maybe you find yourself grinding through writing copy where you are feeling the pressure, and you can tell that it feels like pressure to the person reading it. You sacrifice time with your family. You ignore your health. Your life starts revolving around your next fix of business growth accomplishment. You lose sight of everything else. You become tunnel vision so that all your brain can do is calculate, strategize, measure, compare.

Am I measuring up to this? Am I measuring up to that? What is that person doing? What am I failing to do? What do I not know? What am I missing out on?

And then once in a while you do get that hit that you were looking for, right? "Oh my god, I got that sale. I hit that revenue target. I reached that milestone." Ah, the euphoria I was looking for. That's it. Ah, you let it wash over you and then it, of course, only lasts a minute and you crash. The high wears off faster each time. And then the cycle of seeking the next hit begins all over again.

And at some point, for someone going through something like this, if they're honest with themselves, they look back and they see that they're not okay, they're not feeling well, their relationships are in trouble. And most importantly, their confidence—and I'm talking about real confidence, not the brittle kind that depends on external validation, but the kind that comes from their relationship to themselves—has eroded. Their spirituality, the connection to what really matters, has withered. Everything that really gives them stability and gives their life meaning feels shaky.

So what typically starts people down this path? You may or may not recognize it, and as with addiction to substances like alcohol, opioids, addictive patterns usually begin when you're trying to fill an unmet emotional need. Maybe you grew up hearing that your worth was tied to your accomplishments. Maybe you experienced scarcity and now you're terrified of not having enough. Maybe you learned early on that love and approval only came when you performed perfectly and that they were withdrawn from you when you didn't perform perfectly. These triggers create a deep emotional wound and the endless pursuit of business growth can be the drug that we use to numb that pain.

But here's the thing: things that are genuinely healing and nourishing for you, things that genuinely work for those pains, don't have this addictive effect on you. And things that are genuinely nourishing are things like nutritious food, adequate sleep, play, spending time in nature, creativity, genuine connection with loved ones, being of service to others. These things leave you strengthened. They actually strengthen you. They actually heal you. They leave you feeling more like yourself, not less. They build you up rather than hollow you out.

Like for example, if you got eight hours of sleep and you feel well rested, you don't feel like you need to go out and sleep for 16 more hours to feel even better rested. It doesn't work like that with healthy nourishment. You know when enough is enough if you feel healed and if you feel peaceful. When you spend like a few hours in the mountains, you don't progressively need more and more and more time in the mountains to feel the same amount of peace and contentment and healing, right?

And in the same way, like if you had a really good, soulful conversation with a friend that left you feeling like, "Ah, that was so good for my soul," it doesn't make you feel like you have to call them back and have 10 more of those in a row immediately afterwards, right?

Addictive drugs are the opposite. They leave you feeling the opposite way. They promise something they can never deliver on while progressively, over time, slowly but surely turning you into an empty shell of who you used to be.

And here's how it might look like in real life. It's like maybe you used to enjoy the process, but maybe you find yourself only being focused on the outcomes. Maybe you used to have rich conversations with your friends and maybe just with yourself while you're journaling about your ideas and creative visions and dreams. But now you mostly find yourself only thinking and talking about metrics and strategies. You used to feel generous and collaborative, but now you just look over your shoulder and you can only see people as: they're doing better than me, they're doing worse than me, or they know something I don't, or I already know what they know. You used to trust your instinct, but now you might be constantly second-guessing what you already know based on what this expert is saying, what this trend is saying, what this data is saying.

Growth for the sake of growth is an addictive and destructive drug. Let me be very clear. At the risk of being repetitive, it promises fulfillment, security, worthiness. But it is a promise that it was never designed to keep and it is never capable of keeping. And the more you chase it, the further away you get from who you actually are.

So how do we get off this treadmill? I have some ideas.

Step one is seeing this destructive cycle of addiction really for exactly what it is. Call it what it is. Stop romanticizing it. Don't say, "Oh, I'm just a hard worker," or "I'm just really committed," or "I'm ambitious." Tell yourself: "I might possibly be addicted to business growth," and recognizing that what I'm addicted to is something that was never designed to actually fulfill me. It was never designed to deliver on the promise.

Step two, and this is even more important, is recognizing that this addiction, just like any other form of addiction, whether it be alcohol or opioids or gambling or porn or whatever, probably started from trying to meet an unmet emotional need. Maybe you're trying to prove your worth because you were taught early on that your worth is something that has to be proven as opposed to just inherent and unconditional. Maybe you're trying to feel safe in an uncertain world. Maybe you're trying to control as much as possible because so much is uncontrollable in this world. Maybe you're trying to earn love and respect. Maybe you're trying to outrun some deep-seated fear of not being enough.

And let me be very clear: it's not a problem that you have an unmet emotional need. To have an unmet emotional need, or several, is like the most basic universal human experience. Everyone has many. I have more than you can count. You are not wrong or broken or flawed or less than because you have unmet emotional needs. The problem happens when we are looking to drugs that can't supply the solution, right? The endless pursuit of more and more and more business growth cannot give us what we need. It's the wrong tool for the job. It's like trying to slice an apple with an iPhone charger. It doesn't work. It's like trying to build a computer with a violin—wrong tool for the job. It's not going to work, and you're probably just going to do more damage in the process.

The real work, the work that's actually going to set you free, is to identify the unmet emotional need for really what it is that you're trying to fulfill by endlessly pursuing business growth and figure out how to meet that emotional need. And this requires self-awareness and sometimes just being aware of yourself by yourself isn't enough, no matter how self-aware you are, no matter how smart you are. And sometimes it's super helpful to have facilitation, right? To have someone like a trusted friend or therapist, even better, or a coach or an elder to help you sort through your deeper inner motivations. And this is the work of healing and growing yourself—not because you need to achieve something or prove something, but because you see that you deserve to know that you are whole. You deserve to feel whole. You deserve to feel at peace.

And I want to be honest with you: the reason, the only reason I know any of this is because I lived through this addiction myself, and I had to, across multiple different areas of my life, and areas of work, I should say, and life. And I had to hit rock bottom in many ways and find my way to what works. So I'm speaking very much from experience.

So if you recognize yourself in what I'm describing, I can tell you from personal experience that if you're like me and most people I know, breaking free from this pattern can feel pretty freaking uncomfortable. At first, you might experience what I can only describe as like real withdrawal symptoms. When you stop chasing the next achievement, the next goalpost, the next milestone, you might feel anxious, restless, even just painfully, excruciatingly bored. I just feel like sometimes—maybe this is only true for ADHD brains, but the worst emotion is like boredom. Like I hate being bored. You might feel like you're falling behind or missing out, and that might feel really stressful on your body. And I want you to know that's normal and it's temporary.

But I do want to suggest a few strategies that can help during this transition.

First, and this is crucial: unsubscribe from and unfollow and maybe even block everything you're being exposed to right now that triggers these addictive tendencies. Be aware that your social media feed and inbox and the general internet at large is full of triggers that make you feel like you are not enough and you're not doing enough, and you need to perform and do this and achieve in order to be good enough. There are people who are specifically and incredibly intentionally trying to trigger those feelings so that you'll keep scrolling, keep consuming, keep clicking, and keep buying. They literally make money the more deeply addicted you are to growth.

So that means unfollowing—and this may or may not apply to you, still listen critically—but this might mean for you unfollowing accounts that are constantly talking about success or unfollowing accounts that are constantly talking about money or revenue numbers or business success, or how you're getting left behind if you're not doing X or Y or Z. Accounts that are constantly talking about the right launch strategies to guarantee five-figure launches or talking about their secret to success that you're missing out on. It might mean unsubscribing from newsletters that make you feel like you're not moving fast enough, or not earning enough, or not growing enough, not succeeding enough. Blocking people who are always humble bragging about their achievements or sharing screenshots of their bank accounts.

I don't care if they have good intentions or if they share other helpful content—it doesn't matter. It's kind of like if somebody is an alcoholic, if somebody has an alcohol dependence and it's ruining their lives, it doesn't matter if their drinking buddies are good people. We don't care if they're like the best people on the planet and they genuinely have a good time together and if they have good intentions—you've got to stop going to the bar. I don't care what a good person the bartender is. They could be like saving refugees. Like I don't care. It's just that you need to not go to the bar. That's that. I don't know if that's a good analogy, but you need to go cold turkey for the sake of tending to your addiction.

And I'm sorry, these are like very strong words, but I kind of feel like they're necessary. I mean, I don't know if it's necessary, but I think, I feel like it's really is a useful analogy for paying attention to how these patterns work, right? And it's really useful to be very clear with yourself about this and to stop consuming content from anyone who makes you feel like you're falling behind, like you're not doing enough, like you need to hustle harder. Anything that feeds this omnipresent cultural narrative that feeds the addiction of so many people to work and to growth. Like you want to be aware of it and you want to say, "I get to choose what goes into my brain and I say no to this." I'm not saying this is evil, this person is bad, but today, this is not going to enter my brain. Okay? Your recovery depends on creating a clean information environment, clean energetic environment. Guard your energy and brain space like a hawk. You cannot heal from an addiction while constantly being exposed to dealers.

Secondly: address the underlying unmet emotional need that's driving the addictive patterns. The metrics and the strategies and the constant goal setting—it's not the problem. It's just how you are trying to manage the pain of the unmet emotional need. So focus on other ways to take care of your nervous system: connect to nature, spend time with loved ones, pursue your hobbies, meditate, do breathing exercises, get physical exercise, get enough sleep, get nutrition, connect your spirituality. If you can get therapy, whatever. When you're feeling less anxious overall, when you feel more emotionally fulfilled overall, the compulsion to chase the next achievement is going to weaken naturally. And even if you do feel the drive to work, it's going to come from a more healthy and whole place.

Third: reconnect with activities that used to bring you joy before you got caught in this cycle. Remember what you used to love to do when no one was watching, when there was no monetization strategy involved. Maybe it was reading fiction. Maybe it was taking long meandering walks in the park. Maybe it was cooking elaborate meals, playing music badly, dancing badly. Do those things again and resist the urge to turn them into content or to monetize them or optimize them.

Spend time with people who love you and value you for who you are, not what you output. These might be old friends who knew you before your business success or outside of your business identity, family members who couldn't care less about what you do in your business (as long as they're supportive, right?), or new friends who share totally different interests. Let yourself be seen and loved for your character, your sense of humor, your obsession with trees, your kindness—not your achievements.

I recently had actually an opportunity to do this, to get to meet a whole new set of people, new friends, who had no idea who I was online. And it was actually so nice. It was really refreshing, and I was just like another person to them, and it really fed a part of me. And I encourage you to do the same if you feel like you're also in like a business bubble.

Lastly: be patient with yourself and accept that from time to time you'll probably relapse into old patterns and that's okay. Plan for it. If you find yourself falling back into compulsive metrics checking or goal setting, or obsessing about this and that, don't spiral into shame. It's okay. That's what the brain does. Hello? Just like put a check mark, like, "Oh, my brain did what brains do. Congratulations to myself. I have a healthy brain. Good job," right? "My brain is working normally—that's a good thing," right? Just notice it and gently redirect yourself. Recovery from anything isn't linear. The key is to keep coming back to your intention to heal, your intention to walk yourself back to wholeness, even when it feels uncomfortable.

The Right Kind of Growth

This is not a call for you to abandon the project of growth. It's about distinguishing between growth that comes from wholeness that naturally wants to expand versus growth that comes from trying to fill an unmet need. One builds you up and the other tears you down.

So how do you tell the difference? Here's some ideas:

Growth that comes from wholeness feels energizing, even when it's challenging. It aligns with your values and who you want to become as a person and the kind of relationships you want to have with the people around you, with the ones you love, with whom you want to serve. When you think about it, you feel grounded, not frantic. And you can imagine yourself being content and being more of who you are, whether you achieve it or not, and the pursuit itself feels meaningful outside of the outcome. And yeah, of course there could be ups and downs, but overall you like yourself with or without having achieved the goal.

And I will say this kind of business growth is often oriented in your sense of contribution or connection to others, or even connection to a part of yourself or creative expression, right? So I guess I can call it the three Cs: contribution, connection, or creative expression. These three, and business growth that comes from an orientation in these three will make you feel more like yourself. When the why is contribution, connection, or creative expression, it's going to make you feel more like yourself. It's going to bring you home to yourself.

On the other hand, business growth that comes from trying to fill an unmet need feels urgent. It feels desperate. It feels anxious. It's often about proving something to yourself or others. When you think about not achieving it, you feel panic. You feel shame. It's usually about having more or being seen as more or avoiding some kind of outcome that you fear. It means you feel like you are running from something rather than moving towards something. And here's the key indicator: achieving it never feels like enough. There's always another level, another milestone that promises to finally deliver you to the promised land, finally make you feel good enough, finally get you to where you want to be.

So ask yourself: does this growth that I want to go for, does it make me more of who I am? Or is it trying to fill a hole in who I am? Is it moving me towards something that I value or running away from something that I fear?

The question isn't whether you should grow. All living things grow to their right shape and size to a certain extent, and then it stops. Think about it: does an apple tree grow as tall as a skyscraper? Of course it doesn't, right? But until it reaches the correct height for itself, it's going to grow naturally and you want to set up the conditions for yourself to grow to the natural extent that you can fully express your gifts and contribute to the world.

The question is: where are you planted? What is nourishing you at the roots? And when you can answer those questions and you like those answers, you are on your way to freedom.

I hope this was helpful in disrupting the ever-present narrative in our culture that more and more and more is always better, and in fact, there is such a thing as enough. And enoughness comes from our relationship to ourselves, our creativity, our contribution to others, our connection with others, and really that's what liberatory business is all about.

Thank you so much for listening, and I'll talk to you next time.