The Hidden Trap of Success and How to Escape It | (#011) Beyond Success: Psychology & Philosophy for Achievers, with David Tian, Ph.D.

Welcome to “Beyond Success,” the podcast for high-achievers seeking deeper meaning, fulfillment and purpose. Now, here’s your host, world-renowned leadership coach and therapist, David Tian.

Welcome to the Beyond Success podcast. In this episode, we’re diving into something that could change your entire experience of life, how to redefine success in a way that’s deeply fulfilling, not just impressive on paper. By the end of this episode, you’ll be able to have a new vision of what life could look like if you built it around your true values and purpose, not just the benchmarks that others expect you to hit, finding the kind of success that feels right that aligns with who you are now, not who you used to be or who society says you should be. [00:00:51]

Now, let’s get clear on why this matters so much. Ignoring these ideas, staying on autopilot, means risking your life’s work on something that may not even matter to you in the end. You could end up looking back and realizing you’ve been climbing a ladder that was never really yours. Missing this opportunity for clarity means missing the chance to experience the kind of success that truly satisfies you, that brings you real peace, and that’s an awful price to pay for staying in your comfort zone.

In case you don’t know who I am, I’m David Tian, and for over the past almost 20 years, I’ve been helping hundreds of thousands of people from over 87 countries find success, happiness and fulfillment in their personal and professional lives.

In this episode, I’ve got three major points to cover, and the first is on the limits of material success and status-driven achievements. For most people, success is about climbing that ladder. You work your way up. You collect achievements. You gather influence. You maybe stack up a good amount of cash or wealth along the way—and, of course, these things can give you a sense of security. They can bring recognition from the people around you. They can make you feel significant. [01:58.8]

But there’s a major catch: they can’t fulfill those deeper needs for meaning, for connection, for purpose, and that sense of aliveness or joy, the feeling that you’re in sync with who you are and with what really matters to you, and that feeling can’t be bought, no matter how high your net worth might be.

Abraham Maslow had figured this out years ago. He’s a famous figure. You might have heard of Maslow’s pyramid. In Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, he placed physiological and safety needs at the bottom. Once those are taken care of, you move up to belonging, and then to esteem. Then there’s the problem. So many high achievers stop at esteem. They get that recognition, that admiration from others, and then they start defining themselves by those titles, by those external markers of success. [02:49.0]

But you’re still only halfway up the pyramid. The upper levels, self-actualization, transcendence and so on, go beyond what other people think about you or what they see on your LinkedIn profile or your résumé or your CV. They’re about becoming who you truly are inside, about fulfilling your potential as a person and connecting with something larger than yourself, and if you’ve never moved past esteem, you end up missing out on the most fulfilling parts of life.

This isn’t a new idea. The ancient Daoists were talking about this thousands of years ago. They warned about the danger of attaching yourself too closely to external markers. In the Dao De Jing, Lao Tzu says, “Those who know they have enough are rich,” and that’s actually a profound statement, because it shifts the whole idea of wealth. He’s not talking about enough as in a number in your bank account. He’s talking about enough as a state of being, a contentment that comes from within. For Lao Tze, real wealth has nothing to do with comparison or competition. It’s about living in alignment with your own true nature, knowing when you’ve arrived there and no longer needing external things to validate your worth. [04:03.0]

Early Daoism takes it even further. It suggests that the constant striving for recognition or validation, that endless comparison, is a recipe for suffering. In another line of the Dao De Jing, Lao Tzu warns, “When you are content to be simply yourself and don’t compare or compete, then you will be worthy of respect,” and that’s a whole philosophy for living right there. Success is about finding peace within yourself, not about proving yourself to others. It requires listening to who you really are, instead of chasing every new milestone thrown in front of you.

The irony is, the more you define yourself by these external markers, the further you drift from your true nature and therefore your happiness and meaning in life. You end up getting pulled into a life that may look great on the outside, but feels hollow on the inside. The Daoists call this “the way of the world,” this endless hustle to keep up appearances to achieve more and more without ever stopping to ask if this path is even truly yours. [05:07.4]

So, what does it look like to connect with this something deeper, to align with who you truly are? Okay, it requires recognizing that material success can only take you so far. Here’s an analogy for it. It’s like having a strong, stable foundation for a house, but never building the rest of the house, the rest of the structure. The foundation is essential, of course, but it’s not the actual home. The home, which is, in this case, your purpose, your values, your meaning, needs to be built on top of it. Otherwise, you’re just standing on bare ground, no matter how solid it might be.

Let’s ground this in modern life. I’ve worked with many clients who have reached the highest levels of material success in their careers. They’re executives, high-level leaders, some of the top achievers in their fields or industries, but they come to me with a sense of unease. They can’t always put it into words right away, but it’s this feeling that something’s missing, that they’re on a track that no longer fits who they really are and it maybe never did. [06:08.2]

When we dig deeper, we often find that they’ve been living by someone else’s definition of success, society’s, their families’, often their parents’ or their industries’, and along the way, they’ve lost touch with their own definition, and this process of realignment can be very challenging for them, especially for people who have spent years, sometimes decades, climbing their way to the top of this particular ladder.

It can feel really disorienting to them to ask, “But what do I truly want?” or “What actually matters to me, really?” But those questions are essential because they take you past the limits of material success and into the upper realms of self-actualization or of transcendence, of integration. They help you build a life that doesn’t just look successful but feels fulfilling from the inside-out. [07:01.0]

When you let go of all those external markers, when you stop defining yourself by status, wealth or accolades, or someone else’s definitions of success, then you make space for something deeper within you to emerge. You start to connect with your real values, the values that are most important to you, things that aren’t dependent on recognition or external validation.

This is the area, the space where real purpose resides, and is where you can find a kind of success that no one else can give you and no one else can take away—and that’s the first major step in redefining success, understanding that material success and social status have limits. They’re great stepping stones. They’re great foundations, but they’re not the whole picture and they’re not the most important part of the picture.

True fulfillment starts when you recognize that your worth doesn’t depend on how others see you or in hitting the next big milestone. It depends on connecting with who you truly are beneath all of that, and then building a life that’s in harmony with those deeper values. [08:07.7]

Okay, let’s get to the second point, which is all about transitions. These are the transitional times when life throws you a curveball and you’re left wondering what it all means. This could be career shifts, midlife challenges, the end of a long relationship, or even the loss of someone who is really close to you. These transitional moments feel like total disruptions, but they’re also invitations. They’re actually a call to self-discovery.

They push you to step out of the familiar and confront what’s been hidden below the surface, the deeper layers you probably didn’t know about while you were focused on keeping everything moving forward or moving up that particular ladder. It’s like the initiation phase in Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey. The hero doesn’t find transformation by staying comfortable. They have to face the unknown, and in doing so, they discover parts of themselves they didn’t know existed. [09:03.0]

These transitional phases, as painful as they can be, have a way of stripping away what’s unnecessary, forcing you to confront your real motivations, your real fears, your real values. They challenge you to look at what genuinely matters to you. Here’s an example. I had a client, let’s call him Chris, who came to me after a huge career change. He’d been in finance his entire career, worked his way up to a pretty high ranking position at his bank, and earned the respect of everyone around him, but he wanted to leave it all behind.

He told me he’d lost the drive, that he felt like he’d been living someone else’s life, and in reality, this wasn’t something that happened overnight. Chris had ignored the signs for years, the restlessness, the doubts, the feeling that his career wasn’t aligned with who he really was and who he wanted to become. When he hit his late-40s, the discontent became impossible for him to ignore. Leaving his career felt like a deep personal loss, like he was mourning the person he thought he was, the identity he had built up for over many decades. [10:10.0]

Transitions like these often bring up what Carl Jung called the Shadow. In my previous podcast series, the Masculine Psychology podcast, I devoted several episodes to exploring the Shadow, and these are the parts of ourselves that we don’t want to acknowledge, the parts of ourselves that we keep buried or hidden. For Chris, this was his fear of failure, his need for approval, the anxiety that he wasn’t enough without his professional identity.

It’s easy to think these feelings make us weak, but confronting them is part of what Jung called individuation. Individuation is about integrating all these hidden parts of ourselves into a complete, authentic self, and this isn’t just theory. It’s a real and often grueling process, but the result is a more resilient and better antifragile and grounded version of yourself, a higher version of yourself, a fuller version of yourself, someone who isn’t just defined by what they do, but by who they truly are. [11:11.7]

This idea of facing the Shadow applies to anyone in a transition. It’s like looking in the mirror and finally, seeing yourself more clearly, flaws and all—and for Chris, this process meant confronting the fact that his career had been a way of proving himself, but that wasn’t enough for him anymore. He had to redefine his sense of worth this time on his own terms, not based on anyone else’s approval.

There’s a concept in psychology called post-traumatic growth. It’s the idea that going through difficult times, even traumatic experiences, that that real adversity can actually lead to profound personal growth. Instead of being crushed by the transition, you use it as fuel to discover your strengths, values and passions that you didn’t even know you had. [11:59.7]

Research in the field of positive psychology has shown that people who go through major life changes can and often do emerge with a stronger sense of purpose, a clearer sense of what they actually want out of life. It’s like the old structures of who you thought you were have to be torn down to make room for something truer, something that feels more aligned with who you want to become.

In Chris’s case, his career transition forced him to examine what he really wanted. He realized he wanted to spend his time helping others find fulfillment, to use his experiences to mentor younger professionals. This wasn’t something that he had ever considered before consciously. He had been so focused on climbing his own ladder that he hadn’t thought about how he could contribute to others. But through this difficult transition, he tapped into a sense of purpose that was deeper than his previous career goals. He was no longer trying to prove his worth to others and especially to his dad. He was living in alignment with his worth and his deeper purpose. [13:01.7]

Hey, if you’re an achiever who’s been struggling when it comes to managing your emotions or navigating your relationships, I get it. So many high-performers hit a wall when it comes to emotional mastery. Maybe you’ve noticed that stress, frustration or anger is seeping into your personal or professional life, or you feel disconnected from those you care about.

That’s where my “Emotional Mastery” program comes in. It’s based on peer-reviewed, evidence-based therapeutic methods to help you find happiness, love and real fulfillment. Learn how to break free from the emotional roller-coaster and start thriving in every area of your life. You can find out more at DavidTianPhD.com/EmotionalMastery. That’s D-A-V-I-D-T-I-A-N-P-H-D [dot] com [slash] emotional mastery.

There’s an existential element here. Irvin Yalom, a world-renowned psychotherapist and existential psychologist, wrote a lot about how facing these big questions, like, “What am I doing with my life? What really matters to me?” that these bigger questions can actually bring us closer to a sense of deeper meaning. [14:15.4]

Yalom believed that grappling with these existential issues, instead of avoiding them, is what brings real depth to our lives. Of course, this isn’t easy. These questions don’t have simple answers, but by embracing the uncertainty, by being willing to question everything, you open up a space for a much more meaningful life—and this is the power of life’s transitions. They force you to stop running on autopilot and to ask the bigger, more meaningful questions, like what you truly value. They ask you to let go of the old structures that no longer fit you, and in doing so, they make space for something new and better for you.

When you come through the other side, you’re not just older. You’re wiser, more grounded, and you have a deeper understanding of who you really are. You’ve tapped into something that goes beyond the labels, beyond the achievements, and this is the authentic True Self that you’ve been waiting to discover. [15:12.8]

So, if you’re in a phase of transition, if life is forcing you to confront what feels like a breakdown, realize that this could be your invitation to your initiation. This could be your chance to redefine your success, to make it something that actually aligns with who you really are now, not who you were 10 or 20 years ago, who you were programmed or brainwashed or influenced into becoming by others.

Life transitions may feel like they’re breaking you, but maybe they’re just breaking you open to the parts of yourself that you need to discover and that need to breathe. If you can, reorient to embrace the discomfort. Allow yourself to explore what you might have been keeping hidden. Use this as an opportunity to connect with what really matters to you, to step into a life that isn’t just successful on paper, but fulfilling on every level. You’re in the process of building something more authentic, something that’s rooted in who you really are. [16:15.8]

Okay, the third and final point is about how to redefine purpose and success in alignment with your True Self. What do all these terms mean? This means that real fulfillment doesn’t come from stacking up achievements or hitting milestones, or just getting recognition from others. True fulfillment comes from knowing who you really are, knowing what really matters to you, and aligning your actions and life with those. It comes from living out your own values, not the values that society or your parents, or your industry or even your past self might have forced on you. This kind of alignment leads to a level of satisfaction and meaning of fulfillment that is immune to the external ups and downs of life. [17:00.8]

Okay, let’s go back to Daoist philosophy for a moment, because this idea of harmony with yourself is at the core of many Daoist teachings. In the Dao De Jing, Lao Tzu said, “Knowing others is intelligence. Knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength, but mastering yourself is true power.” This short passage speaks to the power of self-knowledge, of turning inward to understand who you really are beneath the layers of external expectations. When you know yourself, your True Self, you’re not as easily swayed by other people’s opinions or by the latest fad or trend. You are more deeply rooted.

For so many people, though, the concept of success has always been wrapped up in what the outside world tells them, and it’s defined by the people outside themselves. Most of us were conditioned from an early age to measure our self-worth by what we can achieve and by what others think of us. It’s no wonder people end up feeling lost later in life. When you have built your identity on the expectations of others, you lose touch with what genuinely excites and fulfills you. [18:11.8]

This is where Maslow’s idea of self-actualization comes into play in a big way here. Self-actualization isn’t about gaining more. It’s about becoming more. It’s about realizing your unique potential, stepping into your True Self. Maslow placed self-actualization at the peak of his hierarchy of development, because it’s only after our most basic needs and then our social needs are met that we can then truly start exploring our individual potential.

But self-actualization isn’t something that society generally rewards or even recognizes. Society is at a lower level of development, generally speaking, and rewards tangible material success, like titles, wealth, influence, but self-actualization is a deeply personal journey that often takes you off the well-worn path. [19:04.4]

So, how do you start to align with this true self of yours? First you have to let go of the identities that no longer serve you. Maybe that means stepping back from certain roles or responsibilities. Maybe it means reevaluating your current relationships, or maybe it’s as simple as asking yourself, “What do I really want now here and now?” It requires courage to release the past, especially when you have built a lot of your life around it.

But when you do that, when you come to terms with where you have grown to now, when you let go of what no longer serves you and you let go of what is no longer true for you, then you make room for something more authentic to emerge. Jung’s concept of individuation is sort of similar to Maslow’s self-actualization, but with a focus on integrating all the different parts of yourself, your Shadows, your managerial parts, to use IFS language, your deeper drives. [20:00.8]

For Jung, this process of individuation was about becoming more whole, about owning every part of yourself, even the parts you’d rather ignore. True fulfillment, he argued, comes when you can accept and then integrate all aspects of who you are, and that’s not something you can achieve through accolades or through status. It’s something that you cultivate through self-discovery.

When you start this process, you’ll notice a shift in yourself. You’re no longer as concerned with other people’s definitions of success. You’re a lot more focused on what feels right for you, what energizes you, and how you can contribute to the world in a way that aligns with your unique strengths, values and passions.

This is where Daoism can offer a lot of wisdom. In early Daoist philosophy, every person has their own dao, their own way, their own path, and the goal isn’t to mimic others, but to live in accordance with your own dao, your own nature. [20:57.2]

In the Dao De Jing, Lao Tzu describes this beautifully: “A tree that cannot bend will crack in the wind. The hard and strong will fall, but the soft and yielding will overcome.” Here, Lao Tzu points to the idea of flexibility, of adaptability, of going with your own natural flow rather than forcing yourself into rigid forms or expectations.

True fulfillment doesn’t come from resisting who you are or trying to force yourself to fit into a mold that is not true to who you are. Instead, it comes from embracing your own nature, allowing yourself to follow what feels real and alive for you, and that might mean redefining what success means on your own terms now.

One of my clients, a man, let’s call him James, went through this exact process. James had reached the height of his career in a tech field, and by all accounts, from the outside, you would definitely say he was successful, but he actually felt unfulfilled. His life felt like a series of tasks, of projects that didn’t mean much to him anymore. [22:02.8]

When we started working together, I encouraged him to explore what he genuinely enjoyed, to look back at what had always brought him joy, even or especially as a child. Through this exploration, he rediscovered a passion for storytelling and creative expression, something that he had completely forgotten and had left behind many years ago because he thought it wasn’t practical or useful.

Once he reconnected with this more creative side of himself, James made a major shift. He began integrating creativity into his life in ways that were much more meaningful to him, carving out time each week to create, to write, and the impact on his sense of wellbeing was gigantic. He felt a lot more engaged, more alive, and his professional life actually improved, too, because he was no longer trying to live up to a version of success that didn’t feel authentic to him. He found a way to contribute to others while living out his own unique potential. [23:01.7]

This is part of the beauty of realignment. It doesn’t require you to throw away your entire life up to this point. It simply asks you to bring more of yourself into it, and this kind of realignment is where true fulfillment can be found.

When you’re living in a way that’s consistent with who you really are, you experience a sense of inner peace, of deep satisfaction that goes beyond any external accolade like a trophy or a title. You’re not striving for the next thing, hoping the next thing will fill this gap of meaninglessness in your life. Instead, you’re building a life that already feels whole and you’re adding to it. You’re expressing it, and when you’re in this space, you’re not only happier, but you’re also better able to contribute in ways that feel meaningful and feel impactful, because they’re coming from a more authentic place in you. [23:53.1]

So, redefining success isn’t about rejecting your past achievements or rejecting the traditional markers of success. You can have both. Instead, redefining success comes from expanding your definition of success to include who you truly are and where you are now in your life. It comes from crafting a life that resonates more deeply with your true values, your real passions and your strengths, not because someone else told you that it was the right thing to do, but because it feels true to you.

That’s the kind of success that is lasting, that brings real joy and real fulfillment, because it’s not dependent on the external opinions of others. When constantly hitting new goals, it’s rooted in who you are, and that’s something that, of course, no one can take away as long as you continue to exist.

This journey of redefining success isn’t always easy, of course. It requires introspection, honesty, courage, and often a bit of solitude, but the rewards are, of course, immense and life changing. When you live in alignment with your True Self, you’re not only more successful, you’re free, free to be yourself, to contribute in ways that really matter, to experience life more fully—and that’s the ultimate goal, isn’t it? A life that’s not just impressive from the outside, but meaningful on the inside for you. [25:14.3]

Okay, let’s do a quick recap here.

First, we explored the limits of material success and status-driven achievements. We saw how true fulfillment can’t be bought or achieved just through external markers. Yes, they can provide security, but they don’t satisfy those deeper needs, like meaning and connection. Success only becomes fulfilling when you go beyond the surface and align it with who you truly are.

Second, we looked at transitional phases as powerful opportunities for self-discovery. Those moments of change, whether there are midlife shifts, career changes or personal losses, are, of course, unsettling, but they are also invitations, if you look at them in the right way. They push you to go inward, to confront the hidden layers of yourself that often only surface when the familiar falls away. In those moments you get to realign, to break through old patterns and to discover strengths you never knew you had. [26:11.2]

Finally, we went into how to redefine purpose and success in alignment with your True Self. Real success comes when you connect with what genuinely excites you, what feels genuine to you and makes you feel alive, and then build a life around those values. It’s about finding fulfillment by embracing who you are now, not who you think you should be or who others expected you to be.

Now, if you ignore this journey, the cost is incredibly steep. You might keep chasing the next achievement, the next external validation, only to find yourself exhausted and unfulfilled and having wasted a lot of time in years of your life and effort. You risk building a life that on the outside might look perfect, but feels empty on the inside, a life where you’re living by someone else’s definition of success, never your own, and then that’s a life half-lived. [27:02.8]

But if you take these concepts and ideas and insights to heart, the rewards are completely life changing. You’ll experience a kind of deeper success that’s actually genuinely satisfying, a success that feels right on the inside. You’ll navigate challenges with resilience, with antifragility, because you’ll become stronger as a result of the adversity. Knowing they’re part of your growth, not just setbacks, you’ll create connections that matter and live a life aligned with who you really are. This isn’t just success. It’s freedom, and that’s a life worth having.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode. If it has helped you in any way, please share with anyone else that you think could benefit from it. If you liked it, hit a like or give it a good review on whatever platform you’re listening to this on. I look forward to welcoming you to the next episode. Until then, David Tian, signing out. [27:50.2]