Over the years, you became someone who adapted to the circumstances back then, and now you feel compelled to keep being that person. This old identity is a big reason for your success. But it also imprisons and restricts your future.

You feel neurotically compelled to defend this old identity, even when your circumstances have dramatically shifted. It stuffs you in a box where you’re unable to grow. You dismiss information, advice, or possibilities because accepting them would challenge who you believe you are.

It actively prevents you from building a more fulfilling life. And it’s terribly hard to even notice when your old identity takes over, let alone create a newer, more flexible, and less rigid one.

Have you achieved success only to be met with a background anxiety that’s slowly poisoning your enjoyment of life? Do you feel like an imposter who always has to stay “on guard” to prevent the mask from falling?

When you know how much of your success you owe to luck, you can’t honestly use it as proof that you’re better than other people.

If you persist in looking down on them as less than, then you’re just lying to yourself.

You can fool other people. But you still have to live with what you know is the truth. And until your conscience is clear, no amount of success will allow you to enjoy your life in peace.

This is why billionaires are sometimes the unhappiest people even despite their incredible wealth. And, bizarrely enough, it’s also the reason white supremacists are so unhappy too.

But here’s the good news…

You’ve thought the decision through and had good reasons for making it. But now you’re living with the results, and you keep wondering whether you chose wrong.

Maybe you ended a relationship and miss the person. Or you declined an opportunity and can’t stop thinking about what you gave up.

But if you take the painful consequences as proof of a bad decision, then you end up returning to the same toxic relationship, or restoring the original unresolved problem, or spending another year going back in circles. Or keep flip-flopping until you no longer trust yourself to make a good decision and follow through.

Yet, you can’t simply ignore your gut feelings, either. Sometimes they reveal a problem you overlooked.

You’ve thought the decision through and had good reasons for making it. But now you’re living with the results, and you keep wondering whether you chose wrong.

Maybe you ended a relationship and miss the person. Or you declined an opportunity and can’t stop thinking about what you gave up.

But if you take the painful consequences as proof of a bad decision, then you end up returning to the same toxic relationship, or restoring the original unresolved problem, or spending another year going back in circles. Or keep flip-flopping until you no longer trust yourself to make a good decision and follow through.

Yet, you can’t simply ignore your gut feelings, either. Sometimes they reveal a problem you overlooked.

You’ve thought it through, and your decision makes sense. But then another concern comes up, and you can make just as good a case for doing something else.

After a while, you start to wonder whether you can trust your own judgment.

Being smart can make this harder, because you can build a convincing argument for whichever option you feel most pulled toward.

You’ve thought it through, and your decision makes sense. But then another concern comes up, and you can make just as good a case for doing something else.

After a while, you start to wonder whether you can trust your own judgment.

Being smart can make this harder, because you can build a convincing argument for whichever option you feel most pulled toward.

Failure is easy to notice.

You build the wrong company, make a bad investment, or choose the wrong direction, and eventually the result tells you something went wrong.

Success can actually be harder.

Let’s say the company grows, the numbers improve, the sacrifices keep paying off.

Meanwhile, you may be giving up time with your spouse, your children, your health, or years of your life that you can never get back.

There’s a difference between wanting more time to live your life and needing more time to live your life.

You can want another twenty years because you love being alive. Or you can need them because you still haven’t built the relationship, started the family, or spent enough time with the friends you kept meaning to see.

The reasons for postponing those things may have been sensible. But the same reasons can keep you postponing them for another decade or more.