Success Without Soul
The ladder you climbed was leaning against the wrong wall—and how you became complicit in extractive systems
Opening: The Threshold Moment
Hangzhou, China. One week before the coronavirus pandemic.
I was facilitating a leadership program for a top medical device company. The kind of client every coach dreams of. The participants were brilliant, ambitious, burnt out. Long hours. Longer weeks. The training was designed to give them tools for resilience, connection, and community. But there was a catch: the HR manager sat in on every single session. Confidentiality, trust, the safe space where leaders actually dare to be honest—it all disappeared the moment she walked in.
By Friday, we were at the celebration. Chinese New Year in the grand ballroom. Everyone dancing, forming a long train weaving through the hotel. And I watched their faces up close.
They were performing merriness. I could see the strain. The effort. The compliance masquerading as joy.
And that's when I realized I was complicit. My role as coach had been coopted. I wasn't there to develop these leaders. I was there to manage their burnout while keeping them compliant. To report back on each of them. To make the system that was extracting their aliveness look like development.
I knew why I was doing it too. I was chasing excellent reviews from participants so I'd get more high-profile clients. And many of those clients were extracting 150% from their already overworked, burned-out employees who had no margin for living outside of work.
All the success of leading that program meant nothing if my work was potentially hurting the participants in my training.
Walking out of that ballroom, I felt hollow. Empty. Like I'd betrayed something in myself I didn't even know mattered until that moment.
The Paradox: Everything Looks Right, Nothing Feels True
This is a particular kind of threshold—not burnout, not failure. It's misalignment.
You can have the title. The influence. The metrics all pointing upward. And still feel like you're not actually alive in your own life.
According to Gallup's 2024 Global Workplace Report, 77% of employees worldwide are disengaged or quietly quitting. But what's less visible is that even among senior leaders, engagement drops sharply after 10–15 years on the same path. Not because they stop caring. Because the external markers that got them there—titles, income, recognition—stop meaning anything.
McKinsey research shows that 70% of senior leaders report their personal purpose is not fully expressed through their current roles. That's not weakness. That's a signal.
The signal says: the ladder you've been climbing is leaning against the wrong wall.
This is what I call "success without soul"—the paradox of having achieved externally what you thought you wanted, only to discover that achievement and aliveness are not the same thing. The metrics work until they don't. The promotions land until they feel empty. The recognition arrives and you realize you're being celebrated for a version of yourself you're no longer sure you recognize.
Why the Metrics Stop Working
Once you have basic competence and security, your nervous system stops asking "Can I succeed?" It starts asking "Should I be succeeding at this?"
The external markers that motivated you—titles, income, influence—they were never actually the goal. They were proxies for something deeper. Proof that you mattered. That your choices were valid. That you were on the right path.
But once you have them, they lose their power. Because they can't answer the question that emerges next: Is this actually me? Or am I living out someone else's definition of success?
That's when the split happens. One part of you performs flawlessly. You know exactly what to say. Which moves land. How to show up. You're fluent in the language of success.
Another part stands back and watches. And whispers: I didn't choose this.
Harvard Business Review calls this "meaning fatigue"—feeling effective but not fulfilled. It's not a personal failing. It's a signal that the old story is no longer adequate. Your nervous system is asking for something different: integration, not escalation. Coherence, not conquest.
The Hidden Cost of Living Someone Else's Story
I saw it clearly in Hangzhou. But I've seen it many times since, in conversations with people who've built impressive lives and woken up wondering: How did I get here?
The cost of this split is subtle and relentless. It's not the burnout of overwork. It's the exhaustion of holding two truths at once: I'm successful, and I'm not satisfied. I'm good at what I do, and I'm not sure it's what I want to do. I have what I thought I wanted, and I want something else entirely.
This is when the observing self becomes louder than the performing self. And that's not a breakdown. That's the beginning of integrity.
The question it asks is simple and devastating: What values are being dishonored by my current definition of success?
When you finally answer that honestly, the threshold becomes unavoidable. You can't un-see it. You can't unknow that you've been fragmenting yourself, performing a role, serving someone else's definition of what matters.
In Hangzhou, I couldn't unsee that I'd become part of a machine designed to extract more from people while calling it development. I couldn't unknow that I'd chosen prestige over integrity, that I'd rationalized complicity as pragmatism. And once I saw it, I had to reckon with it.
When the Old Story Collapses
Here's what I know now: that hollow feeling, that sense of self-betrayal, that something essential has been compromised—these are not signs you're broken.
They're signs you're outgrowing the old story.
The caterpillar doesn't gradually become a butterfly. It dissolves completely. What worked for you before becomes a cage. Your competence, your strength—the things that got you here—can trap you.
This is uncomfortable. It's supposed to be. Comfort would mean the old form still fits.
In Hangzhou, my discomfort wasn't a failure of ambition. It was evolution. It was the moment my observing self became too loud to ignore. And it cracked open everything I thought I knew about what success meant.
This is the Chrysalis moment. Not the romantic idea of transformation, but the actual dissolution of the old structure. The disintegration of the identity you've been performing. The collapse of the story that no longer serves you.
But here's the thing about collapse: it's not the end. It's the threshold. It's the moment where the old form dies and something truer becomes possible.
The Work Begins With Noticing
Realignment doesn't happen in one dramatic leap. It happens through small, deliberate recalibrations.
First: Notice. Pay attention to when you feel alive in your work and when you're performing. Notice where you're energized and where you're depleting. Notice the values that light you up and the ones you inherited by default. This is data collection for your own becoming.
Then: Name it. Say it aloud. Write it down. Tell someone who won't try to fix it. The moment you name the misalignment—"I'm successful at something I'm not sure matters"—something shifts. The observing self becomes more real than the performing self.
Finally: Experiment. You don't have to burn it down. You don't have to quit. But you can start making small choices that feel more aligned. Take on a project that genuinely interests you, not one that looks good. Say no to something that's been draining you. Let one small choice lead to another.
That's where authentic alignment starts. Not as a grand vision. But as lived choices. Small recalibrations toward who you actually are, what actually matters to you, and what contribution you actually want to make.
The nervous system learns through experience. Each small choice toward coherence teaches you what aliveness feels like. Each moment of saying no to what doesn't belong creates space for what does. Each act of choosing yourself over the performance accumulates into a different life.
This is the unglamorous, necessary work. Not the big breakthrough moment. The thousand small moments of choosing differently.
The Threshold As Passage
That ballroom in Hangzhou one week before everything changed—it was a threshold for me. Not because my world fell apart, but because I finally admitted it already had. I'd been living a success that wasn't mine. Complicit in systems that extracted more than they gave.
The pandemic came. The world shifted. And I shifted too.
But that shift didn't start with the crisis. It started with noticing. With the willingness to feel that hollow feeling and ask: What if acknowledging this self-betrayal isn't a failure of ambition, but where honesty begins?
This October, Thresholds opens here—at the moment when "success without soul" stops being invisible and becomes undeniable. Over the next 12 months, we'll move deeper: how leaders rebuild identity not from external validation but from internal coherence. How organizations create cultures where people don't have to fragment themselves to be successful. How meaning becomes not a luxury, but a necessity.
But it all starts with one question:
What would become possible if you stopped ignoring that hollow feeling and allowed it to be your turning point?
What's Your Threshold?
I'm genuinely curious: Have you had a moment like Hangzhou? A moment when you realized the success you were chasing wasn't actually yours? When the observing self became too loud to ignore?
The willingness to name these thresholds—to admit where we've become complicit, where we've been performing, where the old story no longer fits—that's where the real work begins.
If this resonates, I'd love to hear your story. You can share in the comments, or reach out directly. This conversation is the beginning of the Chrysalis arc.
Because the threshold is not an ending. It's an invitation to build something truer.