One of my teachers used to remind us, plainly and often, that we are not here just to shop. I have never forgotten it.
It was not a rejection of money or work or accomplishment. It was a reminder that accumulation is not the same as meaning, and that a life spent only accumulating eventually runs out of reasons to continue.
The question that arrives later
I have an MBA. I have built businesses. I understand revenue, strategy, growth, and execution, and I take them seriously. I am not anti-success. I am anti-confusion about what success is for.
What is all of this for?
The question does not require you to abandon what you have built. It asks you to put it in its proper place. To stop treating the accumulation as the destination and start asking what the accumulation is in service of.
The question is not a problem
Many people arrive at this question and treat it as a malfunction — something to be fixed, optimized, or overcome. But the question is not a problem. It is a sign that you have outgrown a smaller frame, and that a larger one is available to you if you are willing to sit with it.
More to sit with
Forcing What No Longer Wants to Move
Most stuck situations are not problems of effort. They are problems of recognition — seeing what a system is already doing before you push harder against it.
Human SystemsThe Problem Behind the Problem
The problem you can see is not always the problem you need to solve. A note on how human systems hide their real constraints in plain sight.