The Shadow of Success: How Your Real Potential Can Hide in the Shadows

by Oli Anderson, Transformational Coach for Realness

How Your Definition of ‘Success’ Can Be a Reflection of What You’re Resisting in Yourself & Life

‘Success ‘is one of those words that seems pretty straightforward until you stop and ask what the hell it actually ‘means’ and where you picked up this sense of meaning in the first place:

Is it jus about having more money? A better job? Or the biggest house on the street?

Is it about running a successful business? Having a beautiful family? A ripped-up six-pack and a million followers on [some social media platform]?

Maybe it’s just having the freedom to spend Tuesday afternoon walking around your living room in your underwear because nobody can tell you what to do?

The point, I guess, is that depending on who you ask, “success” can mean almost anything and it’s exactly because of this that our relationship with it can become shadowy if we’re not paying attention.

This is the third article in a series exploring how the Shadow can show up in either a Passive or Active way around different emotions and expressions of our real human qualities:

In this article, we’ll be looking at success and the idea that we can either OWN our Realness and express something with it by taking Real Action or send our Realness into hiding behind the Ego – the mask we put on because of shame, guilt, and/or trauma (The Unholy Trinity) – and then identify with an unreal version of success that shows up in either an overly Passive or Active way.

As with everything else on this site, the fundamental principle is simple:

REAL ALWAYS WORKS.

After all, where else can you get actual results except in reality itself?

The problem is that we often try to get the results we’re looking for while simultaneously avoiding reality and that’s exactly where the Shadow comes in.

Let’s dig a little deeper:

What Does ‘Success’ Really Mean?

Let’s start by throwing away the conventional definitions of success and keep things real:

For the purposes of this article, success means managing to stay REAL despite the enormous pressure that many people experience to abandon themselves as they move into adulthood.

You could call this the exact opposite of what happens when we participate in the “soul murder” that so many people are driven towards because of our childhood conditioning etc. and that just wears us down gradually over time and leaves us ‘living’ in the Void (a state of disconnection from the truth caused by being conditioned for judgement instead of acceptance)

This kind of ‘success’ looks different for everybody which is why for one person it might mean building a business, for another it might mean raising children, and for somebody else it might mean making art, travelling, teaching, working outdoors, or simply constructing a quiet life that doesn’t make them want to punch a hole through the wall every Sunday evening (or any other day of the week, tbh).

Real ‘success’ comes from understanding that all of these external things can be very ‘good’ things but they’re not the ULTIMATE (because the only ‘ultimate’ is your relationship with life itself and that is sourced internally).

In other words, real success means moving towards wholeness rather than fragmentation which in turn means becoming less dominated by unresolved shame, guilt, and trauma, integrating the Shadow Self, moving beyond the Ego and old conditioning, and living according to your actual values rather than the values handed to you by “The World”.

This is really important to know because “The World” isn’t reality (which is unchangeable) – it’s just a collection of social scripts, expectations, assumptions, status games, cultural conditioning, and other people’s ideas about how you’re supposed to live (all of which change all the time,

We can also say that real success means moving towards a life characterised by building flow rather than friction which is what starts to happen more and more frequently when you reconnect your own essence (your Realness) and then actually start expressing it (with the highest form of expression being real action).

You don’t merely discover your Realness and then sit around admiring it like an interesting pebble you just tripped over on the lakeshore – instead, you make a CHOICE to build something with it.

You live it, embody it, and serve the world around you with it.

That’s ultimately what it means to embrace your Real Potential.

The Shadow Dance

If you’ve read some of the articles on this site about the Shadow then you’ve probably seen me describe the relationship between the Ego and Shadow Self as the Shadow Dance.

If you haven’t – or need a refresher – then it goes like this:

When we’ve been conditioned (usually in childhood) to judge certain ‘parts’ of ourselves as being ‘unacceptable’, ‘unlovable’, or [anything similar], then we attempt to disown them by making the decision that “I can’t be [that]” and – in order to act on this decision – we create a mask that allows us to believe that those very real ‘parts’ no longer exist.

This ‘mask’ is the Ego but it doesn’t actually make the disowned parts disappear – instead, they go underground and hide in the Shadow Territory where the wait for an opportunity to express themselves.

This creates the Shadow Dance and because the Shadow is made up of things we’ve decided we’re not allowed to be then it tends to express itself in distorted ways by ensuring that our hidden shadow ‘parts’ become either too Passive or Active – meaning that we either don’t express the quality at all or we express it compulsively and unconsciously.

When it comes to our potential and our relationship with ‘success’, then, this gives us two very different-looking problems:

The Passive Shadow of Success

The Passive Shadow of Success happens when somebody has disowned their own potential almost completely for whatever reason:

Somewhere along the way they’ve picked up enough shame, guilt and/or trauma to conclude that they aren’t really “allowed” to become more than they currently are and so they create an ego that takes them out of the natural drive towards learning, evolution, and wholeness that we all have (which is why babies don’t think about learning to walk – they just do it, for example).

Perhaps they believe they’re worthless (even though nobody is – that’s just shame speaking).
Perhaps they believe they’ll fail (which is fine and can be handled).
Perhaps they believe they’re simply “not that kind of person” (and so they cling to an unreal self-image).
Perhaps they’ve internalised the idea that life is something that happens to them rather than something they can participate in (so they live as an effect of life instead of a cause).
Etc. etc. etc.

At the extreme end of the scale, the Passive Shadow results in somebody taking almost no meaningful action at all and so they have little ambition, don’t look after their body, don’t develop their mind, and don’t pursue relationships that actually matter.

Instead, they tend to drift between meaningless jobs (or unemployment), resent being told what to do, complain about their circumstances, and then do very little to change them – in other words, they start to identify as a victim.

Because they’ve become identified with the ego and the beliefs that stem from it then they may even defend this state:

“That’s just who I am“.

(Etc.)

Nope, that’s just who you’ve become identified with because your real potential (which we all have all have) has been sent into the Shadow Territory and is being expressed in the Passive Shadow.

One of the most destructive beliefs we can adopt is that the Void is real and that we’re powerless to do anything about it because the Void is just a disconnection from reality that causes us to stop moving and become spectators in our own lives.

The tragedy of all this is that the potential we’re refusing to express doesn’t disappear but goes into the Shadow which, again, means that the Passive Shadow of Success isn’t really a lack of potential:

It’s just potential that has been disowned.

The Active Shadow of Success

The Active Shadow looks completely different even though the fundamental cause is still the same: a disconnection from truth that led to a disconnection from realness and a life lived in the Void.

In fact, this person with the Active Shadow of success may appear incredibly successful to anybody observing them from the outside-in:

They’ve got the house, the money, the career, an intimidating LinkedIn profile, and everything appears to be going brilliantly…underneath all this activity, though, is the same ol’ restless itch that torments any other void-dweller but the only difference is that instead of withdrawing from life, this shadow type attempts to outrun the Void through achievement.

This means that they become a human doing instead of a human being and start living from the outside-in rather than the inside-out.

All they focus in is ‘more’:

More work.
More money.
More recognition.
More sex.
More followers.
More achievements.
More productivity.
More goals.
More optimisation.
More podcasts about optimisation.
More [more].

The underlying assumption is always some variation of “If I can just achieve enough then I’ll finally feel whole and the Void will disappear” (though they probably don’t know what the Void is).

Unfortunately, because the actions they’re taking in order to get ‘more’ are being driven by the Ego then they’re fundamentally unreal and so they just lead back to square one (because if you put unreal into something, you get unreal out of it).

The Active Shadow type achieves something – let’s say they finally get the promotion:

There’s a little dopamine hit, then it disappears, and so they need another promotion, and then another target, another achievement, another mountain, and yet another thing to prove.

In short, they’re constantly taking from life in an attempt to fill something that can only be filled by returning to Truth and this is exactly is why somebody can have everything they’ve ever been told or think they ‘should’ want and still feel like something is missing (because it is: their connection to their own realness)

The problem isn’t necessarily that they haven’t achieved ‘enough’ but that they’re trying to use achievement to compensate for disconnection from themselves.

That’s the Active Shadow of Success.

Real Success: From Taking to Giving

The alternative isn’t to become Passive or to become even more Active just for the sake of ‘doing’ things but to become Real which means learning to balance “not doing” and “doing” by making sure that our Action comes from Realness rather than Ego.

In this state, we don’t do nothing and we don’t attempt to do everything – instead, we just learn to do what’s actually ours to do.

A great starting point for this is getting in touch with our real values and then asking a powerful question:

How can I make my values valuable to other people?

This is a powerful shift because it reconnects you to your realness internally but also externally:

If you value creativity then create something that you can share with others.
If you value truth then tell the truth to the people you care about (or that you don’t!).
If you value freedom then build something that creates more freedom for the world around you.
If you value beauty then make something beautiful that touches other people.
If you value knowledge then learn and teach.
If you value connection then build real relationships and show up from a place of connection within yourself first and foremost.
Etc. etc. etc.

The point isn’t simply to possess your values internally or for yourself and your own life alone but to actually embody them and turn them into something that can be given.

This is where Real Potential becomes Real Success because it means that you aren’t trying to take from the world in order to fill the Void but that you’re using what you’ve been given to serve.

That’s a completely different energy:

It’s REAL.

Trusting Yourself and Life

There’s another crucial ingredient here which is one of the tastiest ingredients of them all:

Trust.

When we’re living from the ego then we become obsessed with controlling outcomes, thinking we need to force everything, needing to know exactly what will happen, being ‘right’ all the time, fearing the unknown, and attempting to manipulate reality into giving us something for nothing.

The truth, though, is that life is bigger than us and that reality just is what it is and doesn’t exist to satisfy the ego’s demands or what it ‘likes’ or ‘dislikes and so being real means recognising this and learning to participate in life rather than trying to dominate it.

This doesn’t mean becoming passive or fatalistic but it does mean taking the real action that’s actually ours to take whilst allowing reality to respond in its own way:

We act, we adjust, we learn, we respond, and we build flow – in other words, we do our best (trust ourselves) and let go of the rest (trust life).

If you’re a man who wants to go deeper into shadow work then the Shadow Work Toolkit for Men could be exactly what you’re looking for.

How to Balance the Shadows of Success

So how do we actually do something about all this and start balancing things out again?

Well, in the same basic way we deal with the Shadow everywhere else:

Awareness, Acceptance, and Action.

1. Awareness (Deconstruct the Ego)

The place to start is by examining your current definition of success by asking yourself:

“What do I actually want and what have I been told I ‘should’ want?“

“Which of my ambitions genuinely feel like mine? Which ones only exist because I want approval, status, security or recognition?“

“Am I avoiding real action because I believe I’m incapable? Or am I constantly taking unreal action because I’m terrified of stopping?”

(Both of these can be Ego strategies and first creates the Passive Shadow and the second leads to the Active Shadow).

2. Acceptance (Integrate the Shadow)

The next step is to stop judging the parts of yourself you’ve pushed away – for example:

Maybe you actually are ambitious.
Maybe you’re creative.
Maybe you want to build something new.
Maybe you want a quiet life.
Maybe you want money.
Maybe you don’t.

None of these things automatically make you real or unreal but the question does arise about whether you’re willing to own what’s true rather than constructing an identity around what you think you’re ‘supposed’ to be.

3. Action (Trust Yourself and Life)

Finally, DO something real – not because it will make you look ‘successful’ or because somebody else will approve…not even because you think achieving it will finally make you whole but for the simple fact that it’s the next honest expression of who you are based on the Awareness and Acceptance you’ve raised.

After taking that real step then all you need to do is keep going:

Learn from reality, adjust and course correct, build, serve, and give.

Allow the results to teach you as you LEARN BY DOING because real success isn’t about getting everything you want but about becoming increasingly capable of expressing what is real in your life.

If you know the difference between real and unreal then true success is yours.

The Final World: The Realness of Success

The more Real you become, the more your potential can move out of the Shadow and into the world and that’s ultimately what success is – the gradual transformation of potential into expression, expression into Real Action, and Real Action into something that serves life.

The Passive Shadow says “I can’t” and the Active Shadow says “I must” but Realness always says:

“This is what’s true and I can build with it”.

That’s the path from fragmentation to wholeness and out of the Void because REAL ALWAYS WORKS.

Stay real out there,

Oli Anderson, Transformational Coach for Realness

P.S. If you’re ready to grow real and start moving towards your true potential then book a free coaching session with me and I’ll help you build some flow in your life.

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.

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).

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.

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.

Real Always Works