The Hidden Cost of Success (And How to Stay in the Game)

Success isn’t just about getting there… it’s about staying there.

Most advice around success sounds like a hype playlist—push harder, aim higher, upgrade everything. But very few conversations explore what happens after you win… when the pressure rises, expectations grow, and your nervous system starts carrying more than it was ever designed to hold.

In this episode, I unpack the hidden cost of success—and the skill that matters most if you want to sustain it: the ability to stay in the game.

Using sport as a powerful metaphor for long-term performance, we look at the mindset behind elite consistency. Roger Federer is a perfect example—becoming one of the greatest of all time while losing nearly half the points he played, simply by staying present and focusing on the next shot.

From there, we explore the real divide I see with high performers:

• The outer game — strategy, growth, results
• The inner game — emotional wellbeing, meaning, relationships, and calm

Without the inner game, outer success can quietly turn into burnout, health challenges, strained relationships, or a constant pressure to maintain what you’ve built.

We also go deeper into the relationship between wealth and emotional balance—why more money doesn’t always mean more freedom, and how behaviour, identity, and temperament shape long-term outcomes.

Along the way, I share real-world insights from individuals operating at a high level—those who have built significant success, yet still face challenges around trust, fulfilment, and connection.

And importantly, we cover the practices that keep you grounded while you grow:

• Meditation
• Movement
• Nutrition
• Simplifying when needed
• Surrounding yourself with people who stabilise and elevate you

If you’re building something meaningful, leading at a high level, or stepping into more responsibility—this episode will help you do it in a way that is sustainable, grounded, and aligned.

Because success isn’t just about winning…

It’s about who you become—and how you sustain it.

Transcript

Welcome And The Real Question

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Hello and welcome to the James Grantstrom Podcast Super Soul Model Series. How often do people tell you how to prepare for success? Because there's a hidden cost with success, and that's what I want to share with you in today's episode. Now, it's not about achieving something, it's not about building something, it's not even about creating something. Really, what it is, it's about how to stay there. Because once we've had the taste of something really wonderful like success, we want it again and again and again. But there's a cost to that. And I really like to think of this metaphor with tennis because anyone can have a great match, anyone can have a winning streak, anyone can play really well and be at the top for a little amount of time, but to sustain it now, that is something else. I remember once I had a fiver-side game of football that I used to be a part of, and I remember winning ten weeks in a row, and I was thinking, wow, one week after another, what an incredible winning streak. And I remember thinking, what was I doing in order to enjoy that winning streak? I mean, I was exercising, I was visualizing me scoring. But after 10 weeks, that winning streak came to an end. And instead of like wanting to stop playing football altogether, I continued to play. Now I didn't have a winning streak like that ever again, but I did notice how good it made me feel. But the real thing here is how can we sustain it? How can we stay in the game? And this is what I love about

Why Sustaining Success Is Hard

SPEAKER_00 1:38

tennis. And I never forget Roger Federer's speech. He gave a speech to a bunch of students, and he said in his entire career, he won 80% of his games, which was only 54% of his points that he played, did he win? That means almost half of the time he's losing, and that was enough for him to be considered one of the all-time greats. I mean, if you really look at the margin, it's pretty crazy how small the margin is. What an incredible feat with just a 4% difference. But what made Roger Federer quite different is that he kept on showing up, he kept staying open, he kept on wanting to take the next best shot available. And he was really good about saying in interviews, you know, how do you do it, Roger? He goes, I just try and play the next best shot I can that's available, whether that's a break point or a match point. And I'll never forget watching a Wimbledon semi-final against Maron Chilich, because Maron Chilich has two match points against him to get into his first Wimbledon final. Yet Roger managed to win those two points and win the game. And I remember thinking, that is someone who is so present. That is someone who's always staying in the game. Even when it looks as though he's down, he's not down. And this is what makes us revere human beings, their ability to focus, their ability to stay in the game. And that's really what real success is the ability to keep showing up and keep sustaining it and not just have a one-hit wonder. It's not about just having success once, it's about being able to sustain it and come back again and again.

Responsibility Grows And Pressure Rises

SPEAKER_00 3:14

But now one of the hidden costs of success as you grow is your responsibility starts to become bigger. Meaning you might have a spouse, might have kids, you might have a board that you need to speak to, employees. So responsibility and your life begins to expand, and then suddenly there becomes a lot more pressure. But as you succeed, you kind of want more. But as that pressure starts to build, then also your nervous system starts to begin to tremble a little bit. Now, what's really interesting is that Princeton did a study on how much it would take for you to actually enjoy life, and they said the equality of emotional well-being, I think this was dated back 2010 or 2011, that when you make 100k a year, and in at that time it was 75, but if we sort of use inflation as a modern day indicator, making about 100k a year is enough to really make you feel good about yourself. But after that, what starts to happen is life doesn't change that much, just pressure starts to build. And as we start to go from 250 to 500 to 1 million to 10 million to 50 million to 100 million to 500 million, our ability to be able to stay in our center changes. And if we don't keep up with our identity, our nervous system begins to really tremble and shake. That's why some of the wealthiest people have their number one asset that they're really looking for is to value their time, but also their security, because we fear what we could lose at that level. But their emotional well-being doesn't change so much between 100k a year and a million a year. So we have to really look at what's actually happening, and really what's happening is our internal game.

The Outer Game Versus Inner Game

SPEAKER_00 5:07

So there's been something I've been really looking at into, and this is Tony Robbins' outer game and the inner game, the outer game of success and the inner game of success. Now, the outer game represents things like strategy, things like performance, things like growth, things like momentum, and that is great because we need to know how to build something in order for it to be successful, and if we replicate it and do it well, it's like an ingredient. But there is also another part of success, and that is the inner game, and that is where there's meaning, there's contribution, there's fulfillment, there's peace. And without that, that outer game of success, which sometimes people stumble into, and often it's sportsmen and women. How many times do you come across people who've done extremely well but they can't manage it and lose all their money or they fall ill to health? The reason being is because they haven't mastered the inner game. So when we master the inner game, we'll also be able to enjoy the financial wealth and all the things that come with it. Because true wealth and true success comes as a result of balance. So what I've really noticed while with working with really high performers is that the ones who seem to be thriving are the ones who seem to also have their well-being in check. They seem to have a sense of peace, they have meaningful contributions, they have great relationships, but they also have plenty of resources, and their life isn't just about them. They have mastered that inner game as well. So I guess the real question you have to ask yourself is can you build both at the same time, both inner and outer success? And the answer is yes, you can, but you also have to be aware that it takes time, it takes skill, it takes persistence, it takes showing up every single day.

A Billionaire’s Calm At Selfridges

SPEAKER_00 6:52

And there's one great case study of a chap I met at Selfridge's. I was doing a pop-up show about 10 years ago in Selfridge's, and I met the owner and his wife of Selfridges, and they came to shake my hand, say hello, and I noticed what incredible calm they possessed, how well they were turned out. You know, they were in really good condition considering then they're in the late 70s when I met them. And very present, very thankful. And this guy was worth billions of dollars, yet had such presence, and I enjoyed having a conversation with him for several minutes, and I thought, what a great role model. That's somebody who's mastered something other than just outer success. He's obviously mastered something to do with emotional well-being and being calm under pressure. He must have seen a lot of different things and yet still found this emotional balance, which I found incredibly magnetic. And I remember walking away from that meeting thinking, wow, that is someone who's achieved something, not only on the outer, but also on the inner. And so hence I'm having this conversation with you. But we also have to look at case studies of people who've really mastered the outer game, but maybe not the inner

When Outer Success Breaks People

SPEAKER_00 8:03

game. Someone who might have mastered the outer game might be someone like Steve Jobs. He did phenomenally well with Apple, but fell ill to cancer and unfortunately died almost at the height of his career. But create the most magnificent business of Apple, which has left a wonderful legacy. Someone who really owns that they didn't have their inner game was Ariana Huffington of the Huffington Post, which is renowned for wonderful articles. And Ariana Huffington said in her own book that back in 2007 she collapsed because she was just working so hard. When we're used to working hard and being able to achieve outer success and we neglect the inner part of ourselves, we burn out. And that's what a lot of people face if we don't master the inner game. Another person who mastered the outer game, but maybe not the inner game, was Robin Williams. Robin Williams was a wonderful comedian and probably one of the best, but he also hung himself and died, which also shows what was he like. He was making everybody else happy, but wasn't making himself happy. So we also have to recognize that success, there is a cost, but we need to make sure we're managing both the inner and the outer in order for us to be able to live the experience. Because if you don't actually build peace as well as balance alongside building outer success, you're just going to burn out. The truth is, outer success may build your life, but mastering inner success is the part that helps you really enjoy it and live it. We can be addicted to wanting to make the next amount of money. But if we're doing that at the expense of our own emotional health and well-being, then it's not really worth your time or energy at all. But alas, people still fall prey to this negative loop. And the reason being is because we want to keep sustaining what we've had before, and if we don't, then we don't feel good enough. So it's really important to understand that the cost of success might be your energy or might be your relationships, or it might even be your health, and usually it might be all of those things. So we need to learn how to manage our health and our well-being because our peace will help us really enjoy the things that we've created.

Behaviour Beats Brains With Money

SPEAKER_00 10:51

Now there's a wonderful book that I've read, and it's called The Psychology of Money, and I read it a couple of years ago by Morgan Housel. It's a fantastic book, and he states this he says financial success is less about intelligence and more about behavior, temperament, and emotional discipline over time. So, in other words, really what Morgan was saying in part of this book is it's not just what you build, it's what you can sustain without losing yourself. Because in truth, just like the tennis metaphor, you're going to win sometimes, you're going to lose sometimes. And if you're in investing and you're investing in the markets, you recognize that markets will rise and they will fall, and you'll never always get it right. But if you can be calm under pressure, if you can recognise there will be uptrends and downtrends, and recognize if you can collect somewhere in the middle, you're doing okay. And especially if you're doing it in the long run. If you need short-term gain and you're excited by the little buzz, that will only last a short amount of time, and then you'll get an emotional high, but you also get a real low. And before I started meditating some 20 years ago, that's essentially what I was feeling in my energy, that real high of going out, and then a real low of not going out. And it just went up and down for like several years, and I recognized that my energy was never somewhere in the middle. And I remember when I came across the Buddha's teaching, it was like find the middle way. And that's essentially what Morgan was saying here in the book of Psychology of Money. Not taking the Buddha's teachings, but just there's there is something that you can follow, which is discipline, behavior, temperament, emotional balance in the long run is what will serve you. And that's what we're looking at when we're looking at high performers. We're looking at people with discipline, temperament, calm under pressure. And then when we can demonstrate that in our own life, we're winning the inner game. And if we're not winning the inner game, it's because we're not applying those things. So what happens when you

Scaling Up Can Kill Trust

SPEAKER_00 12:50

scale? What happens when things go really well financially or externally, yet your emotional well-being is compromised? So what actually happens is your nervous system begins to play up. You begin to lose your alignment, you begin to lose your center, and then things crop up and you feel like wary of the world, you feel scared of the world. In fact, you don't begin to trust much, so much so that there's a case study of someone I know who hired a yacht and on the yacht only had two of his friends. He's only got two friends in the world, they're the only two people on that yacht, along with the rest of the staff. And the reason why he keeps his card so close to his chest is because he's lost trust with other people. Because when you're performing at a really high level, making a lot of money, some people who haven't mastered the emotional game don't begin to trust as many people anymore because they think people are out to get them or people want something that they have, usually that's money. So, what's the hidden cost of success here? The hidden cost of success is a lack of trust. Because if you haven't built that inner balance, if you haven't built that emotional well-being, you begin to suffer. And relationships play a massive part in our well-being. Meaning, meaningful interaction, meaningful contributions, finding personal peace is all part of us enjoying that. As far as I could see with this chap who had a beautiful yacht that he hired, he had the money, he had the success, but he wasn't enjoying it. Even though he was sitting on that yacht, he wasn't happy. So, what does it take? It takes you being able to master both of these areas. So, can you build peace alongside outer success? And the answer is of course you can, but you have to do it at the same time.

Recalibrating By Simplifying Your Life

SPEAKER_00 14:44

For me, the past year has been quite a reflective year, and it's not necessarily been externally difficult, but it's required a little recalibration, it's required me to be reflective to think, is this the right choice? And previously I'd had my best ever year done very, very well and very satisfied, and so I decided I would upgrade my life, I'd upgrade a few things, which was fantastic. Yet there was something kind of at the end of the season which was getting me. I wasn't having the best particular year with my new upgraded lifestyle, and it seems funny that, doesn't it? It seems that you succeed, you want to upgrade, but something's not quite right. So what I decided was I was going to recalibrate. I decided I was going to simplify my life again just to find personal balance again. And what I noticed was something quite remarkable. Things began really moving again, really gently, really beautifully, in a few different areas. And I noticed just sometimes the greatest gift that we can have is to pivot, is to simplify, is to adjust. Because when we adjust, we're playing the game, we're working with life rather than against it. And instead of feeling like you need to push harder, earn more, make more, be more productive, do more, we're just pivoting. We're just adjusting. We're turning the dial slightly. And that's what I noticed. I noticed some internal change of thinking I could simplify, and then I did, and I had a wonderful dream that night when I decided to simplify about the clarity of the turquoise blue water, the warm water, being able to walk in with the sand underneath my feet in the kind of Maldeese waters. And it was just because that dream represented clarity to me. And I noticed that clarity is like alignment. And that's when I've noticed things in my external world become better and better. Things have been moving again because I've been grounded and recalibrating and simplifying my life. Sometimes you don't need to upgrade everything when you have success. The only thing you need to do is stay grounded and stay on your mission. I love this quote, and it says, someone said this. He goes, if you stay small enough long enough, you'll be big enough soon enough. And I really love that because really what he's saying is if you can stay humble long enough, eventually life will bring you more. And this is also playing the inner game and you're playing the outer game because you're not trying to increase your expenses, you're not trying to upgrade too soon. It's just like stay calm, stay cool, be methodical and adjust if necessary. This is really powerful because you don't need to push harder, you don't need to try harder, you don't necessarily need to do more, you just need to calibrate your own energy and stay in emotional balance.

Adaptability As The Real Advantage

SPEAKER_00 17:42

So in elite performance psychology, those who are consistently able to show adaptability are really revealing something. They're revealing the precursor to long-term success. So it's in our adaptability in the moment, under pressure, that we reveal whether we're gonna have long-term success or not. And the truth of the matter is that if you're able to look at yourself, maybe shift, maybe adapt, maybe pivot, if you're able to do that consistently, you're gonna have long-term success. If you if you look at even pop stars, they keep reinventing themselves over and over again. That's adaptability. And one of the people that comes to mind the most is Madonna, she's reinvented herself so many times, and you know, she's been around for like 40 years. So if we can show adaptability, then we'll be enjoying long-term success. So success, in truth, isn't static. Really, what it is, it's a living system, and it's not just one win, it's a series of many wins, but maybe it's constant recalibration. When I look at Federer, I remember thinking, wow, he's changed his backhand again. He's really trying to do all these things to be able to fit into the modern game. And he was winning for so long, and then when we look at Nadal, we look at Djokovic, these guys have been around for ages, and now Djokovic, who's 38 years old, is finding it difficult to stay in the finals and hang out with the likes of Cinner and Alcaraz because these guys have a different game, an even more powerful game, with even more energy. So everything shifts after a while, but we can't deny the fact that he's been around for such a long time and still performing at a very high level, and that's also because of the way he takes care of himself, his mental game, especially, and the way he takes care of his body and nutrition. So at 38, he's still going strong and probably has one more shot or so for a Grand Slam title to perhaps be the all-time official great sport. Is such a wonderful metaphor for this.

Rory McIlroy And Inner Composure

SPEAKER_00 19:44

And when I look at this golfer, I look at who they were to who they are now. And years ago, I remember was on an interview with somebody saying I could really help coach Rory McElroy because he's getting close to the US Masters, but he's not quite getting the job done. And the US Masters is like the Wimbledon of golf, and uh it gets played every April. And I remember about seven, eight years ago, Rory got to the final day, he was in front and then he flunked it, and he must have done that two or three times more in years after. Now, last year he managed to win the masters, and it was amazing because you should have seen the release of emotion that he had. But the good news was was he began to master his inner game. I'd noticed when I'd been watching as a TV series on Netflix, and I could see how he was becoming more emotionally balanced, he was getting challenged on so many occasions, yet letting it bounce off him, let it fly off him, even some serious accusations for things, and he was letting it sort of bounce off him. And with this type of energy, you are mastering your inner game, you are mastering your inner calm because life is always going to present challenges to you. But are you gonna respond or are you gonna react? And what I really like when I watched Rory this week when he won this masters was he was so calm on every hole. He really looked as though he'd managed his internal game, and that's what we have to do.

Daily Practices That Keep You Well

SPEAKER_00 21:16

We have to learn how to manage our internal game, our emotional well-being, where we can find our calm, where we can find our peace, are our relationships in a good place because our relationships will be a reflection of how we feel about ourselves and the world. So if you want to really master your inner game, you also have to adapt and have really good people around you. You have to be have people around you who will ground you. And sometimes that's having a coach, but sometimes that's also having great family members, a good spouse. So we need to invest in our relationships so that we can be emotionally grounded. So, how do we really keep the faith when things aren't really landing? Well, the truth is you've got to keep the faith. Going, you know, you've got to take another shot, you've got to adapt, you've got to change. You know, the cost of success is you might have had success already, but can you replicate it? And if you can't, that might mean you need to adapt. But it certainly means you need to find your own alignment, you've got to find your own state of calm. Have you got a meditation practice? Ariana Huffington swears by it. I mean, I've been doing this for 22 years every day. I swear by it. You know, do you have exercise in your life? Do you eat well? Do you have good relationships? Do you have meaningful contribution to other people's lives? You know, if we're finding that type of fulfillment, the external world and the external successes will be that much sweeter. We can't win all the time. But when we do win, it is so much sweeter knowing that we're in a good place and we can enjoy that success as well. Because our life isn't defined by peak moments of success, like winning the Masters if you're a golf player, or winning Wimbledon if you're a tennis player. Or even like booking a hundred thousand dollar deal or a million dollar deal or a ten million dollar deal. It isn't about that. It's about what happens in between. It's about how you manage your day-to-day, how you manage your day-to-day with yourself and your relationships and your partners and your family and all the people that you interact with. Because success isn't just about getting validated on the outside, it's about getting validated by yourself on the inside. And if you're calm, if you practice calm, if you find a way to cultivate calm and emotional balance in your life, you'll be enjoying life so much sweeter and all the successes that will come. And the cost of your success shouldn't be about it taking away your health or your energy or your relationships. It should be what are you doing to be able to maintain a state of calm, peace, and equilibrium. So at the end of the day, success isn't what you build externally. It's about what you're also building internally. And it's not about how do I get more, it's more about how can I stay healthy, happy, and grow and keep adding value at the same time? And how can I keep improving, not only in my work, but as a human being. If you ask that question, you'll notice everything shift externally for you. So if you really answer that question, instead of asking how do I get more, you should be really asking, How can I give more? How can I stay well? How can I grow? How can I keep adding value? How can I keep improving? These types of questions shift everything for us. Because in truth, you don't win by playing perfectly. You're never always going to win all the time. But what you really need to do is just keep winning by staying in the match

Closing Message And Share Request

SPEAKER_00 24:46

and never quitting. I hope you've enjoyed this episode. And if you have, please share it with someone who you think will really appreciate it, who needs it. And if you're on your journey to success, just remember the real game is staying well while you grow. This is a wonderful episode you can keep coming back to to learn from. Now, until the next episode, I wish you a wonderful week ahead and green lights all the way.