Why You’re Not Happy & Fulfilled (Even Though You “Should” Be)  | (#025) Beyond Success: Psychology & Philosophy for Achievers, with David Tian, Ph.D.

Most high-achievers don’t want to hear this, but I’ll say it anyway. If you don’t start prioritizing connection, meaningful, real relationships, then your success won’t feel like success.

I’ve coached high-powered CEOs, founders, high-net-worth leaders, people who have built businesses and revolutionized entire industries, and when they finally stopped grinding long enough to look up from their laptops, they realize something is missing. At first, they tell themselves they just need to hit the next milestone, sell the company, reach financial independence, and find the right spouse. But then they get there and the feelings don’t change, because money doesn’t keep you warm at night. Status doesn’t check in on you when you’re depressed or sick. A killer network doesn’t mean you have a single, true friend that you can actually call when shit hits the fan. [01:03.8]

Here’s the truth—the people with the deepest, strongest relationships at work, in their friendships, in their families, are the ones who live the longest, stay the healthiest and feel the most fulfilled. This isn’t some feel-good, self-help fluff. This is several decades of research on human happiness from the longest running study in the history of the world.

But let’s talk about the flip side, the cost of getting this wrong. I’ve seen clients in their 50s and 60s who seem to have done everything right in their careers. They’ve built wealth, crushed their goals, outperformed everyone else around them, but then they’re divorced or in a relationship that feels dead. Their kids barely talk to them. They have no real close friends. They tell me they feel empty, but they don’t know why.

Some of them throw themselves back into work, because at least there, they know how to win. Others numb out with distractions, like travel, expensive toys, a younger girlfriend, whatever takes the edge off, but nothing sticks, and then years later it hits them—they’ve spent their whole life building something, but they have no one to share it with, no one that they really care about. [02:11.3]

That slow-burning loneliness isn’t just a feeling. It’s actually a health risk. Studies show that chronic loneliness has the same impact on your body as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. It kills you early—and here’s what makes it worse. Most people don’t even realize it’s happening. When we were kids, making friends was automatic. We showed up to school, played sports, got thrown into dorms or clubs, and friendships just happened. But as we get older, that stops. Not overnight, not all at once, but slowly, like a friend moves away. Another gets married and gets busy. Someone else has kids and gets busy, cancels plans one too many times, and before you know it, your closest friends are just names in your phone that you think you should text, but never do. [02:59.6]

I’m David Tian, and for almost the past two decades, I’ve been helping hundreds of thousands of people from over 87 countries find fulfillment, meaning and happiness in their personal and professional lives. In this episode, I’ve got three points, and let’s get into the first here, which is that connection is the hidden key to success and longevity.

I don’t mean like surface-level networking or surrounding yourself with people who only care about how they can use you for your status. I mean real connection, the kind that actually moves the needle on your happiness, your health and your professional success.

Most achievers don’t believe this at first. They’ve spent years, sometimes decades, grinding towards a goal, sacrificing their sleep, sacrificing their relationships, their personal time—all for what? A bigger paycheck, a title? A certain type of lifestyle? For a while, this sort of thing works. It keeps them motivated. It gives them a sense of progress. But then something shifts in them. They hit the big milestone, but instead of feeling satisfied, they feel nothing, or worse, they feel trapped, because now they don’t know what else to aim for. [04:09.8]

I’ve worked with CEOs, co-founders, top executives who hit this exact wall. They tell me, “I should be happy. I have everything I ever wanted. But for some reason, it just doesn’t feel like enough,” and it’s not necessarily because they set the wrong goals. In every case, it also is because they chased those goals alone.

The longest running study in human history is on happiness, over 85 years of research now, and it proves this again and again. The biggest factor in long-term happiness isn’t money. It isn’t fame or status. It’s not achievements. It’s the quality of your relationships. [04:51.8]

Okay, before you roll your eyes and tell yourself, “Yeah, yeah, relationships matter. Blah, blah, blah,” it’s deeper than that. Connection isn’t some soft, sentimental extra that you can bolt on to your success later. It directly affects your success, your performance, your resilience, your antifragility, your ability to keep growing without burning out in the long term. High-performers love to optimize everything. They optimize sleep, diet, productivity hacks, but they ignore the one thing that has the biggest impact on their health and a long life, which is the quality of their relationships.

Strong relationships lower stress. They strengthen your immune system. They even increase your lifespan more than athletic activity alone does. People with close, supportive relationships live longer, stay healthier and recover faster from any setbacks, both personal and professional. In the workplace, the highest performing teams aren’t just the ones with the smartest people. They’re the ones with the strongest connections. [05:58.1]

Google ran a study on this. They wanted to find out what made their top teams so successful. Was it technical skill, raw talent, industry experience? Nope, none of those. The biggest factor was psychological safety, which is a fancy way of saying that the best teams were the ones where people trusted each other, felt valued and actually liked working together, which makes sense, because when you don’t feel like you belong, when you don’t trust the people around you, your brain goes into survival mode. You hold back. You don’t take risks. You second-guess yourself. But when you do have strong relationships, when you know your colleagues, friends or partners have your back, then you think bigger. You execute better. You enjoy the process instead of just pushing through it.

So, if you’re telling yourself that connection is only a nice-to-have, but not essential, let’s be clear, ignoring connection isn’t neutral. It actively holds you back, because at some point, no matter how successful you are, you’re going to hit a moment where achievement alone stops working for you, and when that happens, the only thing that will pull you through isn’t another milestone. It’s the people around you who matter to you. [07:10.5]

If you don’t have those people, if you’ve spent your entire life prioritizing achievement over relationships, then that moment is going to hit a lot harder. That’s why connection isn’t a luxury. It’s the foundation for everything else, your career, your health, your sense of purpose, and if you don’t start prioritizing it now, then don’t be surprised when you wake up one day, maybe successful, but completely alone. [07:37.5]

Many high-achievers struggle when it comes to managing their emotions or navigating their relationships, and they 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 David Tian’s “Emotional Mastery” program comes in. It’s based on peer-reviewed, evidence-backed 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.

Now let’s move on to the second point where we’re going to focus even more on work, because for most high-achievers, that’s where they spend the majority of their waking hours, of their waking life, really. They’re constantly on, constantly pushing, and when work dominates your life, it’s easy to start seeing relationships as merely a distraction. [08:48.8]

I’ve coached tons of leaders who think this way. They focus on results, execution, strategy, but relationships are only like nice to have and are secondary. If their colleagues or employees happened to like them, great. If not, who cares, as long as the work gets done? But this is actually where they’re dead wrong. The best companies, the highest performing teams and the most effective leaders all have one thing in common: strong relationships. Not just functional professional interactions, but actual trust, real connection.

This isn’t just feel-good advice. It’s backed by hard data. Loneliness at work destroys performance. It leads to burnout. It lowers motivation. It even makes people physically sicker, which means more sick days, lower energy and weaker output. On the flip side, when people feel connected, when they trust the people they work with, when they know that they matter, when they feel safe to speak up, then they perform at a higher level. They think more creatively. They solve problems faster, because when you don’t trust the people around you, then you hold back. You say less in meetings. You keep your best ideas to yourself because you don’t want to risk looking stupid, or you waste mental energy playing politics, trying to read the room instead of focusing on the work itself. [10:16.3]

But when you do have strong relationships at work, when you actually like the people that you work with, then everything moves much faster. Communication improves. You feel less drained at the end of the day. You even make better decisions because you’re not second-guessing how the other people will react—and this applies at every level, whether you’re running the company or you’re just starting out.

There’s a reason why Google spent millions of dollars on that study that I mentioned earlier on what makes teams successful. They originally thought the best teams would be the ones with the smartest people or the highest IQs, or the most impressive credentials or the best pedigree. But what they actually found was that the highest performing teams were not the ones with the best individual talent. They were the ones where people felt safest, safest to ask questions, safest to pitch ideas, to make mistakes, because when people feel that sense of safety, they feel more free to take more risks. They push boundaries. They care about the work itself, instead of just going through the motions. [11:18.6]

So, if you’re a leader, if you’re running a team, a company, an organization, the quality of your relationships with your people is paramount. I’ve seen leaders who try to run their teams purely through authority. They focus on efficiency. They push for higher performance and they cut out anything that looks like unnecessary emotional stuff, and sure, they’ll get results maybe at the beginning and maybe for a while, but eventually, these people will check out. They stop bringing their best ideas to the table. They do the minimum to get by. They game the system or they leave taking their best work elsewhere. [11:55.7]

Then there are the leaders who actually take the time to build relationships. They know their people. They care. They check in, and what happens is that their teams want to perform well, not just for the paycheck, not just for the company, but because they respect their leader, because they feel seen.

Here’s a real irony. When you build those relationships, you don’t have to push as hard for results. The results come naturally, because people are more naturally engaged. They’re bought in. If you’ve been telling yourself that work relationships don’t matter or that connection is just some HR buzzword, then it’s time to drop that outdated thinking, because every metric that matters, performance, creativity, resilience, retention, they all improve when people feel connected.

If you’re feeling drained at work, if you’re feeling disengaged, exhausted or like work is just a grind, then there’s a good chance that it’s not because of the work itself. It’s because you don’t have real relationships there. So, the next time you dismiss connection as a distraction, remember that the people who are truly thriving, the ones who are both successful and fulfilled, are not the ones going at it alone. They are the ones who have built something together with others. [13:13.4]

Finally, the third point, let’s talk about friendships, real friendships, not just work connections, not just social circles that happen to overlap. I’m talking about the kind of friendships that keep you anchored even when life gets really rough, because here’s what most people don’t realize—friendships don’t just disappear because of time or distance. They disappear because we stop prioritizing them. It happens so slowly that most people don’t even notice it.

In your teens and early-20s, maybe even into your 30s, making friends might feel effortless, like you’re in school together, you’re in the same classes or you’re on the same teams. You kind of hang out with others by default, and then life starts shifting. Work or career takes over. Some friends move away. Others get married, have kids, settle into their own routines. Plans keep getting pushed back. Texts go unread or unanswered. [14:11.0]

Then before you know it, you wake up one day older and realize that the people who used to know everything about your life don’t really know you anymore. At first, it doesn’t seem like a big deal. You’re busy. You have responsibilities. You tell yourself you’ll catch up when things settle down, but years go by and nothing changes.

I coach a lot of high-achievers and this is a pattern I see over and over. They hit their 40s or 50s and they suddenly realize their closest friendships are just memories, and when something big happens, burnout, massive stress, divorce or some terrible loss, then they don’t know who to turn to, because you can’t just pick up the phone after a decade of silence and expect to pick up where you left off. Friendship, like anything else worth having, requires investment, and if you don’t put in the effort now, you will feel it later. [15:07.2]

Now, some people hear this and go, “Fine, I’ll just start hanging out with people more.” They make an effort to schedule dinners or check in, to reconnect, and that’s great, but it’s actually not enough, because the real question isn’t just whether you have friends. It’s also who you’re investing in.

Not all friendships are worth keeping. Some friendships are just proximity-based, people you happen to know because of school or your dorm, or work or just convenience. When life changes, as you change, those friendships fade, and that’s totally normal. The friendships that actually matter, the ones worth investing in, those are the ones built on shared values and this is where most people get stuck. They don’t actually know their values and why they value them. They don’t know what they stand for, what they want their life to be about, so they just keep defaulting to whoever is around or whoever feels familiar. [16:07.0]

That’s why, in my coaching groups, one of the first things we work on with members is clarifying their values, because once you know what really actually matters to you, what principles you want to live by, what kind of energy you want around you, then choosing who to invest in becomes obvious. Some friendships will fall away naturally. Others will need to be let go, and a few, the ones that align with who you really are, those will be the ones worth doubling down.

Let’s be clear, this isn’t just about having people to grab drinks with. This isn’t about filling your calendar with social events just so you don’t feel lonely. This is much deeper. This is about survival. Strong friendships literally keep you alive much longer. [16:54.7]

A lack of close relationships is as bad for your health as smoking more than a pack of cigarettes a day. Loneliness increases your risk of heart disease, dementia and depression. People with strong social ties, on the other hand, live much longer, and not just longer, but better, with more meaning, more joy and more resilience.

But none of that happens automatically, and the older you get, the harder it is, generally, to build those kinds of friendships if you haven’t been actively maintaining them. This is why some of the most successful people in the world, the ones who have achieved what seems like everything on paper, often end up feeling empty in the end. Sure, they’ve built businesses or brands or left some legacies, but they didn’t build relationships that actually fed them, and when the work slows down, when the career doesn’t define them anymore, they look around and realize they have no one that they actually really care about left to share it with. [17:53.7]

So, don’t wait for that moment for yourself. Start investing in the right people now, because if you don’t, there’s a price and it is steep. It looks like burnout. It looks like waking up every day with a sense of “Why am I even doing this?” It looks like an incredibly successful life that still feels meaningless. Connection isn’t automatic. It has to be built, prioritized and then maintained and grown, and the ones who understand that are the ones who truly win, not just in work, not just in wealth, but in life.

Let’s bring this all together. If you’ve been grinding away chasing the next level of success, thinking that once you get there, wherever “there” is, you’ll finally feel fulfilled, then let me save you some time. It doesn’t work like that. Success without connection is empty. You can reach the peak, but if you get there alone, it won’t feel like victory. It’ll feel like standing on top of a mountain looking around and realizing there’s no one there that you actually care about to celebrate with you. [18:57.3]

That’s why I started with this. Connection is the hidden key to success and longevity. It’s not a nice-to-have. It’s the foundation. The strongest predictor of long-term happiness, health and even professional success is not how much money you make or how many hours you put in, or how hard you grind. It is the quality of your relationships.

Yet, ironically, achievers are the worst often at prioritizing this. Most people treat work relationships as transactional. They think the only thing that matters is results. But the truth is, the highest performing teams, the best leaders, the companies that actually last, they all have one thing in common: real trust, real connection, the kind that makes people want to show up and give their best instead of just doing the bare minimum to get by or just showing up for a paycheck.

Outside of work, that’s where things get even more dangerous, because friendships don’t maintain themselves. They don’t last just because you shared a dorm room a long time ago or on the same team years ago. If you’re not actively investing in them, they will fade, whether you realize it or not. [20:06.8]

I had a client. Let’s call him Michael. He was in his mid-40s when he came to me. He was an incredibly successful entrepreneur. He had built and sold multiple companies. He lived a high-status life. He had giant houses, luxury cars, went to exclusive events. From the outside, it seemed like he had everything that people chase after, but he said to me in our first session, “I don’t think I have a single true friend, not one person I could count on to be there for me if there wasn’t anything in it for them.”

It hit him hard when he went through a divorce. Work had always been his focus, his safe place, his identity. But when his marriage fell apart, when his business wasn’t enough to distract him, he realized he had nothing and no one left, no deep friendships, no one checking in, no sense of meaning beyond his career. [20:57.6]

Look, this isn’t some rare tragic story. This is normal for achievers who spend decades believing that their work is enough, that their success will carry them to happiness, until they hit that moment, whether it’s a divorce, burnout, a personal crisis, or just waking up one day feeling completely disconnected from their own life, and they realize this isn’t how it was supposed to feel.

Let’s talk about what happens if you get it right. Picture this. You’ve built something incredible, not just a career, not just wealth, but a life filled with people who really matter to you, friends who know the real you, not just the version of you that you present at work, a spouse who feels like a partner, not just someone that you share a house with. You wake up energized, because your success isn’t just about numbers or achievements. It’s about who you get to share it with. [21:51.0]

Your work feels better, not because the tasks have changed, but because the relationships around the work are stronger and meaningful. When shit inevitably goes sideways, because it will, you don’t have to handle it alone. You’ve got people in your corner, not just colleagues, not just business contacts, but real relationships that have depth, that make life feel worth something beyond the next achievement.

That’s the kind of success that lasts, that doesn’t feel hollow, that doesn’t leave you sitting in a mansion, staring at your phone, wondering why no one that you care about is calling you. But none of that happens by accident. It happens by choice, by prioritizing connection, just as much as you’ve prioritized achievement. So, ask yourself, what kind of life are you really building, and who are you building it with?

Thank you so much for listening. I would love to hear your answers to those questions or any feedback whatsoever. You can leave a comment wherever you’re seeing this or send me an email. If you like this, hit a like or give it a good rating on whatever platform you’re hearing this on, and if this has helped you in any way, please share it with anyone else that you think could benefit from it.

Thank you again so much for listening. I look forward to welcoming you to the next episode. Until then, David Tian, signing out. [23:06.0]