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An article from the Atlantic caught my eye recently, entitled “‘Success Addicts’ Choose Being Special Over Being Happy”. As a recovering “Success Addict” who quit her competitive engineering job to retire 10 years ago, this article resonated with me deeply.
What I realized after reaching FIRE is that it doesn’t solve all your problems. You (or your family members) could still suffer from health problems. You could get stressed climbing a whole new ladder. You still have to find a new community after losing your work social circle. You will still get anxious from time to time.
The difference is that FIRE lets you buy back your time so you can work on all these things. As with all addictions, the first step is acknowledging you have a problem. In this case, success addiction isn’t seen as a problem by society. Rather, it’s celebrated and glorified. Especially now that anyone can use social media to curate their perfect lives and broadcast their success. It’s a vicious cycle.
Having been through success detox multiple times, first having an identity crisis after quitting my job, to later on trying to climb a whole new ladder of FIRE celebrity status (at one point, getting optioned for a FIRE TV series), only to have it all destroyed by the pandemic, then replaced by a family emergency that required us to be in caregiving jail for 3 years, I’ve since learned that chasing success doesn’t lead to true happiness.
According to the Atlantic article:
“You’re not going to find true happiness on the hedonic treadmill of your professional life. You’ll find it in the things that are deeply ordinary: enjoying a walk or conversation with a loved one, instead of working that extra hour , for example”
“This is extremely difficult for many people. If feels almost like an admission of defeat for those who have spent their lives worshipping hard work and striving to outperform others. Social comparison is a big part of how people measure worldly success, but the research is clear that it strips us of life satisfaction.”
I’m not going to lie, some of my life’s most memorable moments have been the “success” related ones—signing a book deal, flying to L.A. to film a sizzle reel for our TV show, being on the front page of the Guardian. But they are short-lived and pale in comparison to the long-lasting impact and meaning of the simple things in my life: spending time with my “ride or die” friends, writing stories with my husband, and raising my son. None of these are considered “successes” by society, and yet, I would not trade them for any amount of fame, wealth, or status.
This is not something I would’ve said 5 years ago. My success addiction pushed me to say “yes” to every opportunity, and as a result, I became just as anxious as I was when I was working. I’d simply traded one ladder for another. I also felt jealousy and FOMO from watching other bloggers get more viewership, affiliate deals, and income (which, by the way, none of us needed). In fact, going to FinCon was absolutely crushing for my self-confidence because all that conference did was remind me of all things that I “should” be doing, like starting a podcast or selling online courses.
In a sense, the pandemic, though horrible, was a great reset. It forced me to delete everything from my hectic schedule and kick my success addiction.
Doing nothing and simply existing, knowing you have enough and being happy was transformative.
Now, I say no to opportunities all the time. I will only take on projects that I find interesting and meaningful rather than to inflate my ego. I can be happy for my peers without jealousy (or even if I feel the FOMO, it quickly passes), and I find joy in mundane things like going to dinner with friends, reading to my son, or going for a walk with my husband. This all took years, a lot of meditation, and learning how to “exist without doing”. It wasn’t easy but it’s deeply comforting.
This is not to say you should never strive to achieve anything or to better yourself. After all, you need the income and the drive to get to FIRE in the first place. But once you’ve accumulated enough, stop trying to chase the next high and switch gears. Go inwards to find true happiness. Internal validation has an end point, but external validation never ends. There will always be someone smarter, richer, more successful than you. This is the ladder that stretches into infinity. You will never reach the top because after you reach it, there will be a new top.
All this is to say, if you’re on the path to FIRE, don’t expect all your problems to be solved the minute you reach that magical number. It won’t. You still have a lot of work to do. But once you have the time and space to do it, you may realize true happiness comes from the ordinary instead of the extraordinary and lasts a lot longer.
You will go through an identity crisis. You will feel lonely. You will feel FOMO that other people are rising up the corporate ladder and you aren’t. That’s all part of the process. Kicking success addiction is hard. Some can’t do it and rush back to their old identity by getting a job. If this is intentional and makes you happy, do it. But if the same patterns of anxiety, stress, and ego inflation continue, you haven’t fixed anything. It’s just another distraction. Breaking out of the Matrix isn’t easy because life inside the Matrix seems a lot more comfortable. But it’s worth it.
What do you think? Do you have a success addiction? If so, how do you break it?
