Why your Success doesn’t give you Joy

Nobody tells you this, but success often creates more anxiety. It doesn’t alleviate it.

Achievements don’t dissolve unease, no matter how many you stack. I dare anyone who has felt anxious or tense and managed to make that disappear through achievement alone, to come forward. I’d genuinely love to meet you. I’ve read about you in books. I’ve heard about you in school. I think I’ve seen you in offices and boardrooms. I’ve just never met you in real life.

The contradiction of Achievement 

Once, I heard someone say that when they reach an important milestone, they don't stop for even thirty seconds to acknowledge and celebrate success. The first reaction is always: “What’s next?”
To me, that sentence doesn’t signal ambition. It signals distress. A system that never allows rest isn’t driven, it’s running. I mean, what would happen if you stop and don’t go after the next achievement right away? I suspect that even the thought of stopping can be unbearable for such individuals. I stopped and thought about it, you can read about it here.

We now see that being busy ticking off achievements isn’t the same as living a joyful life. But since achievement itself feels so strong and human, the challenge is how to choose our achievements better. Which achievements actually support joy, instead of just distracting from inner unease?

I’m not saying that wanting to achieve is wrong. The desire to succeed is one of our most basic needs, but the challenge is choosing what to aim at. Because we keep achieving but still feel empty and that happens because we’re chasing goals that were never consciously chosen. We chase goals that we chose based on fulfilling past-us needs, not present-us needs. Just like I did when I was 9.

Yes, we rarely say out loud that professional success isn’t what we thought it would be. Saying it would mean disturbing an engine that has been running for decades, quietly keeping the world in order. That engine is a story most of us learned early on: be good, act nice, don’t be rude, study hard, get a diploma, find a job, get married, buy a house. I’m not here to argue against these milestones. For many people, they are meaningful, me included. What I am here to say is that they can’t be the only drivers guiding life.

Here’s a practical way to test it for yourself: the Achievement Audit. Pick a single achievement from this week, big or small. Ask yourself honestly: “Did this make me feel alive? Did I relieve familiar tension?” Write down your answer, without justification or editing. Notice what it tells you about how you chase success. This is not self-judgment, it’s awareness. And awareness is where change begins.

Awareness and Asking the Right Questions

To navigate life beyond achievement, you need to ask the questions:

Who am I, really?
What do I value?
What gives me a sense of aliveness?
What makes me feel fulfilled, not just productive?
What do I need in order to feel the way I want to feel?

Where do I get joy from?

For a long time, these questions were treated as indulgent, naive or as “self-help stuff”. Many of us learned to approach them almost shamefully. I think of Charlotte, wandering into the self-help section of a bookstore in secret, surrounded by books about divorce and failure, quickly leaving with a sense that asking deeper questions was something to hide or be ashamed of. Better to order the book online, anonymously, from the safety of home. Wanting to understand why “this is everything I wanted, so why am I unhappy?” wasn’t something she admitted out loud.

Fast forward a few decades since that Sex and City episode aired and the language has changed. A bit. Big media, big voices, big gurus now tell us that finding yourself matters. And yet, in everyday life, in offices and meetings and family conversations, the success wheel is still the dominant path. Keep going. Keep achieving. Keep proving. Am I wrong? 

ChatGPT Charlotte looks scared as she’s going into the Self-help aisle. Wait, did the writers actually call it Self-Hell? LOL

Asking deeper questions is essential, not optional. There is something important that comes with them: awareness. Having awareness means having the ability to see ourselves clearly, to understand who we are, how others see you, and how we fit into the world. Self-awareness gives us power. (Dr. Tasha Eurich)

Awareness of why Sunday evenings feel heavy.
Awareness of why joy fades so quickly when it appears.
Awareness of why you earn enough to travel the world, yet find yourself numbing the experience with a screen.

Becoming aware means noticing your original thoughts and feelings while they are overwritten by logic, by expectations, by the familiar inner refrain of “I should, but I can’t.” It means seeing how your inner world has adapted to the outer one, often at the cost of something essential.

Becoming aware means pausing, observing and asking yourself: how does it feel to be me?

The Delayed Model of Happiness

Dr. Judith Joseph coined the term “humans doing instead of human beings” to describe people who are successful and “look fine on the outside” but are quietly suffering on the inside. She calls this the delayed model of happiness. Many feel guilt or confusion: “Why am I not happy when I have a great life and all these things going for me?”

But success alone rarely quiets inner tension. Here’s a counterintuitive idea - the Anti-Achievement Exercises. Try doing the opposite of what you’re wired to do:

Sit still for 10 minutes with nothing to accomplish, get bored. Just notice how it feels.
Pick one minor “failure” or disappointment from this week and reflect: “What does this teach me about being human, not productive?”

It feels strange at first, maybe even uncomfortable. But these are the moments where you reclaim yourself from the endless wheel of achievement. They are small, intentional acts that reconnect you to life, to being, not doing.

This focus on chasing external success (the career, the partner, the accolades) often makes us unhappy. Even those who achieve high status, earn prestige or fill their resumes with impressive accomplishments can experience anhedonia: the inability to feel pleasure.

Dr. Joseph emphasizes reconnecting with values that provide meaning and purpose, not just chasing what the world says is important. It’s about shifting from “doing” to “being,” and cultivating experiences that nurture our humanity.

Reflective practice is where awareness meets action. Ask yourself:

When you took a nap, did you feel refreshed?
When you felt lonely and reached out to a loved one, did you feel connected?
When you were stressed, were you able to self-soothe?
Am I eating nourishing food?
Do I have access to nature?

Did I stay with these questions long enough to answer or did I run away from them? Do I like the answers? How do I feel when I stay with the answers?

These are not small, mundane questions. Some of these answers are the foundation of your daily life. Your next chapter isn’t about adding more strategies, goals or optimisations. It’s about becoming more but more you.

Redefinition of Success and a call for preventative action

The widely accepted "delayed model of happiness," which relies on achieving success or a "grand destination" (like a job or a partner) to finally feel content, is flawed and actually makes us unhappy.

Instead, the argument made is that the key to overcoming hidden suffering is to access "tiny points of joy", basically a bunch of sensations that are available to use at any time. Tiny moments here and there. That’s the most we can expect and this is what we must learn to live it. This does not mean lack of happiness. Replace happiness with smooth sailing and you’ll start to see what I mean. 

What, all that I’ve worked for so hard is just a bunch of moments of joy here and there? Boy oh boy, I am not sure I can accept this. Or it will require a lot of work to change my mind about my success. I don’t know if I’m up for it. 

If success alone can’t quiet inner tension, then what can? Awareness can. It’s the tiny, intentional acts that reconnect you to yourself. It’s noticing joy when it flickers, pausing when you want to rush. Watching a sunset in nature. Yeah, I said it! 

These moments aren’t “less than” success. Plus, you’re supposed to notice your success, not chase it constantly. When did you notice your success recently?