by Oli Anderson, Transformational Coach for Realness
‘Success’ Can Always Feel Empty and Like Something is Missing When It’s Not Connected to Anything REAL
A lot of men come to me because they’re already ‘successful‘ but it still feels like something is missing:
They’ve done everything they were supposed to do, followed the script, worked hard, made sacrifices, and achieved goals that many people only dream about.
On paper, their lives look great:
Many of them have built successful businesses, they’re disciplined, driven, and capable, know how to set goals and achieve them, and – in many cases – have made money, earned respect, and created tangible results in their lives and businesses.
Many of them have been successful in relationships and so they’ve found a wife, built a life together, and created stability; many others have have had children and become fathers and so they’ve stepped into the responsibilities of family life and done everything they can to provide.
Sounds great, right?
Then why, despite all of this, do so many of them carry an unshakeable feeling that something is missing?
They can’t always explain it but it’s there:
- Sometimes it appears as restlessness.
- Sometimes it’s a low-level sense of disappointment.
- Sometimes it’s just a feeling that life ‘should’ feel better than it does.
- Sometimes it’s the sense that true intimacy is always just out of reach.
- Sometimes it’s the feeling that they’re not really showing up as a father in the way they hoped they would.
- Etc. etc. etc.
In almost every case, things look fantastic on the surface but internally their inner world feels like a Void and the kind of place where the feeling of actually being REAL seems forever out of reach.
If this sounds familiar, then this article will help you understand what’s going on and what you can start doing about it so that you can return back home to yourself.
Let’s dig a little deeper:
The Feeling That Something Is Missing Is Just a Feeling
The first thing to understand is that the feeling that something is missing is exactly that: a feeling.
This might sound obvious but it’s important because our culture has a tendency to romanticise this feeling or just accept it as inevitable (when it really isn’t) and so we’re often told that the endless search is simply part of the human condition and that we’d be insane to think that the ache ever goes away.
Sometimes, it can almost seem like fulfilment is impossible and that life is just one endless pursuit after another and so – as a result of this conditioning – many people unconsciously believe that the answer is always “out there” somewhere:
- The next promotion.
- The next relationship.
- The next business milestone.
- The next adventure.
- The next achievement.
- The next win.
- Etc. etc. etc.
I used to live this way myself and so I would only really feel ‘great’ when I was working towards a major goal or immediately after achieving one.
Of course, the feeling would inevitably fade, the excitement would disappear, and my mood would deflate as the presence of the Void would return and I’d be back at square one looking for the next thing to chase.
At the time, I thought this was ‘ambition’ but what I eventually realised was that it was actually outcome-dependence because I’d outsourced my self-worth to external achievements.
Living From the Outside-In Instead of the Inside-Out
When we depend on external ‘success’ and validation to feel good about ourselves then we’re living from the outside-in which means that our emotional state becomes dependent on what’s happening externally:
- If business is growing, we feel good.
- If our relationship is going well, we feel good.
- If people approve of us, we feel good.
- If we’re winning, we feel good.
- Etc. etc. etc.
The problem with this as a strategy for feeling ‘good’ is that all of these things are unstable because life changes, markets change, people change, and circumstances change and so whenever the external conditions stop giving us validation, we come face to face with an uncomfortable truth:
We haven’t built a solid internal foundation of REALNESS.
This can help us to understand that the reason many successful men feel that something is missing isn’t because they need more success but because they’ve spent years building an external life while neglecting their internal one.
The feeling that something is missing isn’t a punishment – it’s feedback!
What’s Actually Missing?
What we can say, then, is that the thing that most successful men feel is “missing” isn’t another achievement:
It’s REALNESS – a connection to who they actually are beneath all of the roles, masks, and performances they’ve accumulated over the years and then an expression of this through real action.
The missing feeling is often one of the first signs that a man has become disconnected from himself because it serves as feedback that he’s drifted away from his own truth and that he’s been living in an externally sourced way rather than being grounded internally in his own presence.
Unfortunately, most men never learn how to interpret this feedback because nobody explains what it means and we’re told that the endless search and an inner ache is just “part of the human condition” (spoiler: it’s not).
What this means is that instead of listening to this feeling as FEEDBACK, they try to outrun it as being part of the problem:
- They throw themselves into another business project.
- They pursue another goal.
- They buy another thing.
- They seek another hit of validation.
- Etc. etc. etc.
For a while, this works…until, of course, it doesn’t because the Void isn’t caused by a lack of achievement but by disconnection from reality.
Until that disconnection is ‘healed’ then the Void will always be something that’s experienced as will the feeling that “something is missing” which accompanies it.
The Trap of Self-Esteem
One of the biggest misunderstandings in personal development is the obsession with “self-esteem” and so most people spend their lives trying to increase their self-esteem like their lives depend on it.
The problem with this is that self-esteem is often based on external conditions (which – as we have seen – are part of the actual problem):
- It’s how we feel about ourselves when we’re succeeding.
- When we’re attractive.
- When we’re admired.
- When we’re achieving.
- When we’re winning.
- Etc. etc. etc.
There’s nothing inherently ‘wrong’ with self-esteem but the problems start when it becomes the foundation of our identity or self-image because if your worth depends on your performance over your presence then your sense of worth becomes shakeable and dependent.
This is why many successful men secretly feel anxious despite all their accomplishments:
They’ve built their identity on maintaining a certain image and images are exhausting to maintain – what they actually need isn’t more self-esteem but SELF-ACCEPTANCE because self-acceptance is internal, isn’t dependent on performance or outcomes, and isn’t affected by external sources of validation.
Instead, self-acceptance is rooted in the inner ability to recognise your inherent worth as you are – this is where the real work begins to leave the Void once and for all.
How Shame Creates the Ego
The reason so many men become trapped in external achievement begins much earlier than they realise – usually, it starts in childhood because, at some point along the line, the child received a message that they still carry within them even to this day as an adult:
“I am not good enough as I am”.
The message may not have been spoken directly in words – in fact, it can be picked up in all kinds of ways:
- It may come through criticism.
- Neglect.
- Comparison.
- Conditional love.
- Pressure to perform.
- Pressure to succeed.
- Pressure to be someone other than who they naturally are.
- Etc. etc. etc.
It doesn’t actually matter where it came from – all you really need to know if you’re dealing with the problem of the Void and the feeling that “something is missing” or not.
When people are driven by shame (“I am not good enough as I am”), then, over time, they learn to perform rather than simply be and so – instead of expressing themselves in a real way – they end up creating a version of themselves designed to earn approval and to stay ‘safe’.
This performance-based identity is what I call the Ego – it’s not evil or anything like that…it’s just a survival strategy and the version of ourselves we created because we believed our realness wasn’t acceptable.
In order to uphold the illusion of the ego, then the parts of ourselves that didn’t seem ‘safe’ or ‘acceptable’ get pushed into hiding and become the Shadow Self.
The only thing sitting underneath this this inner split is the force that created the whole situation in the first place:
Shame – the conditioned belief that “I am not good enough as I am”.
Once this belief takes hold, we stop identifying with our realness and start identifying with our Ego.
The result is disconnection and a life of living in the Void (which is why it always feels like “something is missing”).
Why Success Doesn’t Solve the Problem
If we haven’t done the inner work required to understand our Ego and to see that it’s just an unreal version of ourselves then we end up creating goals that are simply extensions of it.
The ego is constantly seeking:
- Proof.
- Validation.
- Recognition.
- Status.
- Achievement.
- Control.
- Etc. etc. etc.
It’s because of the ego that we spend years chasing goals that seem important and may even achieve them but – no matter how much success we accumulate – the fundamental problem remains untouched.
This is because the problem was never about the absence of success but a disconnection from ourselves and life.
The Ego believes that fulfilment is waiting at the next destination but your Realness knows that fulfilment emerges from the quality of your relationship with your and life right now.
This is why the feeling that something is missing continues to appear – like we said, it’s feedback as life tries to show you that you’re looking in the wrong place.
When Good Things Become Ultimate Things
Another problem with living from Ego is that it causes us to confuse ‘good’ things with ULTIMATE things:
A career is a ‘good’ thing but, when it becomes the ultimate thing, it starts to consume us and we become workaholics, burn out, and sacrifice ourselves in pursuit of success.
Relationships are ‘good’ things but, when they become ultimate things, we stop seeing our partner clearly, place them on a pedestal, expect them to complete us, and make them responsible for filling our Void.
Children are wonderful but, when they become ultimate things, we stop seeing them as they are and they instead become extensions of our own unmet needs and expectations.
The pattern is always the same:
Whenever we lose touch with our realness, we start asking finite things to solve an infinite problem and they can’t because the only true ultimate is our relationship with life itself.
I don’t mean “life” as a concept but as the lived reality of showing up, being present, moving deeper into truth, growing into wholeness, becoming more integrated, and returning to what is real.
(That’s the ultimate that will feed into all the other ‘good’ areas of your life).
If you want to go deeper into overcoming the Void and building a real life then check out my book Trust: A Manual in Becoming the Void, Building Flow, and Finding Peace.
Returning Home from the Feeling that Something is Missing
The ‘good’ news is that the feeling that something is missing doesn’t mean you’re broken – it simply means that you’re receiving feedback and that a very real ‘part’ of you is calling you back home.
The way forward is not to chase harder or to accumulate more ‘success’ or to find a bigger distraction – it’s to overcome the Void by reconnecting with truth.
This is the journey of returning to realness and the process can be understood through three stages (which I use with my coaching clients when co-creating coaching containers):
1. Awareness: Deconstruct the Ego
The first step is to start questioning the shame-driven identity you’ve built over the years that’s keeping you in the Void:
Ask yourself some simple questions:
Who am I trying to impress?
What am I trying to prove?
Which goals genuinely matter to me because they’re aligned with my real values?
Which goals exist purely because I think they will make me feel worthy?
Awareness begins when you stop blindly obeying the Ego and start observing it so you can make real CHOICES instead.
2. Acceptance: Integrate the Shadow
The next step is to begin reclaiming the ‘parts’ of yourself you’ve rejected and send into exile:
- The vulnerable parts.
- The emotional parts.
- The imperfect parts.
- The scared parts.
- The human parts.
- Etc. etc. etc.
None of these ‘parts’ make you weak – they’re just fragments of yourself waiting to be welcomed back into wholeness.
The more you accept yourself, the less you need the world to do it for you.
3. Action: Trust Yourself and Life
Once Awareness and Acceptance deepen, Action becomes simpler because you stop forcing, stop trying to manufacture certainty, and stop living from fear.
Instead, you start trusting which means that you’re free to:
You do your best and you let go of the rest.
This means that you do what you can do and slow down and let life do what you can’t do – it also means that you take real action from a real place so you can move forward without needing outcomes to define your worth.
Something is Missing: The Real Answer
The feeling that something is missing isn’t a life sentence – it’s a feedback and an invitation back into your REAL life that’s showing you that external success can never replace internal alignment.
You can build a business, you can find a partner, you can become a parent, and you can achieve incredible things but none of these things will ever feel as fulfilling as they could if they’re built on top of a disconnection from yourself.
The answer isn’t less success but MORE REALNESS because when you return to your realness, success stops being something you use to escape yourself and instead becomes something you express through yourself.
This is when the Void finally starts to disappear – not because you found the missing piece but because you realised that the thing you were looking for was never missing in the first place.
Stay real out there,
P.S. If you’re dealing with the feeling that “something is missing” and you’re ready to reconnect to something real then book a free coaching session with me and I’ll help you get back in the zone.
Trust: A Manual for Becoming the Void, Building Flow, and Finding Peace is a book about learning to return to your realness by cultivating trust in yourself and trust in life.
It contains practical exercises and dedicated meditations (Transformational Bridges) to take you DEEP in knowing yourself and life.
This book will answer many of the questions you have growing REAL and flowing towards wholeness. It covers everything from shame to addiction to the unconscious mind and synchronicity (and way more).
Personal Revolutions: A Short Course in Realness is a book designed to help you look at your life from the inside-out so that you can stop holding yourself back and go get what you really want.
It contains 166 practical ‘Revolutions’ for awareness and over 8,000 Self-Guidance Questions for you to uncover new insight about yourself, the world, and reality that you can translate into action and start building your real life on the realest possible foundation.
Shadow Life is an exploration of the human shadow and the hidden side of our personalities. It looks at the masks we wear, where these masks come from, and how we can take them off.
The book explores how we can better manage our relationships with shame, guilt, and trauma in order to remove the Mask that the world has asked us to wear (and that we forgot we were wearing) so we can live an authentic life with less drama, chaos, or BS whilst we’re still around.
The Flow Builder Journal has everything you need to make the next 21-weeks of your life a turning point.
It has monthly, weekly, and daily (morning and evening) check-ins, tools and reflections to keep you in the zone and keep you flowing with zest and momentum.
If you want to get unstuck and grow REAL then check it out.
Download EGO/SHADOW/TRUST - a free guide to transformation that will walk you through the vital stages of Awareness, Acceptance, and Action with practical strategies to implement right away.
