Episode 1148
What happens when you achieve everything you thought would make you happy... and it still doesn't feel like enough?
In this episode, Tim Matthews and Lawrence Davis unpack a challenge that many successful men quietly face. From the outside, life looks great. The business is growing. The money is there. The family is thriving. Yet underneath it all, there's a feeling that something is missing.
They explore why so many high-achieving men struggle to enjoy the success they've worked so hard to create, how the constant pursuit of "more" can leave you feeling empty, and why fulfillment doesn't automatically come with achievement. The conversation dives into the hidden stories that drive ambitious men, the pressure to keep pushing, and the fear that slowing down might mean losing your edge.
Tim and Lawrence also share practical ways to reconnect with what actually matters, celebrate progress instead of constantly chasing the next goal, and redefine success on your own terms. Because real success isn't just about what you've built. It's about being able to enjoy it.
If you've ever felt like you're winning on paper but still feeling unfulfilled, this episode will challenge the way you think about achievement, happiness, and what it truly means to live a successful life.
If you're successful on the outside but struggling with connection, fulfillment, or purpose in your relationship, get access to The Powerful Man's free training. You'll learn the hidden patterns that create distance in your marriage and discover practical steps to rebuild trust, intimacy, and connection.
Get the free training here: https://thepowerfulman.com/scales
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Tim Matthews 0:00
Success without fulfillment is the ultimate failure.
Lawrence 0:02
And there was just an emptiness.
Tim Matthews 0:04
You think you might be afraid of being happy, like you’re scared of being happy. Why?
Lawrence 0:08
Why don’t I feel like I should? It’s all about measuring backwards.
Tim Matthews 0:11
He’s afraid he’s going to lose his drive.
Lawrence 0:13
The pain and discomfort is what brings me the satisfaction.
Tim Matthews 0:16
That’s one of the most courageous journeys you’ll ever take.
Lawrence 0:19
It’s almost like a badge of honor. I’m a disruptor.
Tim Matthews 0:21
The journey is the destination.
Lawrence 0:22
Find out what success means to you, really, and why.
Tim Matthews 0:26
You can have success with fulfillment.
Tim Matthews 0:41
Welcome to another episode of The TPM Show. I am your host, Tim Matthews, joined by the incredible Wild Card.
Lawrence 0:49
Pleasure to be here, Tim.
Tim Matthews 0:50
I’m curious, does your girlfriend call you Wild Card?
Lawrence 0:52
Nope, no one else does that. Although I do have a wonderful gift that I was given from The Rising that has it inscribed on it.
Tim Matthews 1:01
That is fantastic.
Lawrence 1:02
But no, no one else calls me that unless they’ve earned the privilege.
Tim Matthews 1:06
Oh, nice, nice. That’s kind of like, if you know, you know.
Lawrence 1:09
That’s right.
Tim Matthews 1:10
Beautiful. So we won’t dive into your story. I mean, we’ve been here for the past few episodes, so if the guys want to know a little bit more about you, they can always go back and listen to one of the past couple of episodes.
So I was speaking to an incredible guy the other day, and on paper he has everything, everything he ever wanted to have, and more, in fact. And by most people’s standards, you would consider him a huge success. If you were to look at his family, if you were to look at where he lives, how he lives, how he is revered by the people around him, his bank account I mean, even his body if you were to look at any of the external markers, you would be very impressed. I think most people would be envious. I don’t think you would, because of all the work you’ve done yourself, but I think you’d be impressed. I think you’d be very impressed.
However, he feels empty. He feels incredibly unfulfilled and lost, really. And he’s very confused because he has everything that he thought was going to make him happy, yet he isn’t.
As I’m sharing this, I’m thinking about other men that have shared something similar. I remember one guy telling me the story of him selling his business. He sold it for, I think, about 57 million so an insignificant number. It was supposed to be the best day of his life. It turned out to be one of the worst days of his life. The day after the sale, he didn’t have an earn-out or anything, so he just sold, and it was a clean break. And he ended up with a gun in his hand, coming very close to suicide.
So, you know, people often say that success without fulfillment is the ultimate failure. And I want to get your take on this. I want to talk about this and see what you think.
Lawrence 3:37
I think that that’s the first time I’ve heard that phrase when you’ve said it today, and it really rings true. There are times in my history where it should have been a really great day, where things went just perfectly, exactly how you wanted, and there was just an emptiness. The story you just said there reminds me of earlier on this year. I was over in the States with a group of guys, and one of them was very much in a similar situation. You know, had it all the multiple houses, beach houses, everything great and the rest of us in the group are looking at his life and just thinking, you’ve got it all together, man. It’s amazing. Incredible.
And yet there were just a couple of occasions where he said, “You know, the beach house I really want is that one, that one there.” You’ve got this amazing beach house. It’s incredible. But actually there’s still a chunk of him inside that’s like, “But it’s not the one on the corner with the good view.” That kind of just takes the shine off of what you’ve got.
Interestingly, another guy who had a similar kind of lifestyle like all together, beautiful wife, beautiful children, doing fantastically at school, everything going right, the bank account is buoyant and yet still living from that mentality of 10 years ago when he was overweight and people said, “Oh, you’re punching. You don’t deserve somebody as good looking as that.” Even though he’s completely, radically turned his life around, he’s still living from that sense of inadequacy, and that’s taken the sheen off. That’s taken the shine off of that experience.
So I’ve had a lot of experience with this myself in my own history, and just meeting guys who you think would be absolutely on fire, living their best life, and yet there’s a sadness inside them. Almost like the agonies you talk about the greed like never enough. It’s not quite there yet. I’m not quite good enough. I’m not worthy. Or what I’ve got isn’t doing what it said it would.
I created a goal. I achieved that goal. I should be… I did that with the business. I created this goal. We set this up. We hit the targets. Yes. Why don’t I feel more like I should? I don’t think we even celebrated when we hit a really big milestone several years ago. It was, “Oh, well, move on to the next thing.” We didn’t take time to stop and count our win and go, “We need to mark this.”
Now I have a little ritual where I’ll stop and have a moment and just say, “Hang on, I just need to acknowledge this,” because if you don’t, the world just takes over and throws stuff at you. So I think it’s really important to stop and reflect and go, “Wow, this is where I am.”
Tim Matthews 7:15
I think it’s hugely important. I remember a few years ago I was reviewing my year, and one of the things I do when I review my year is I look back over the pictures, because as I’m going through the year I’ll just mark favorites. So at the end of the year I was looking through all the favorites, and I couldn’t believe I’d had such an incredible year one of the best years of my life. I didn’t feel that way. It didn’t land.
And I’m curious why hasn’t this landed? Why did it not feel like one of the best years of my life, even though clearly the evidence shows that it was? And the big lesson I took out of it was I didn’t create enough space to let the experiences land. It was that reflection piece.
The following year, although I was still journaling that year and doing things like that, one of the shifts I made at the end of that year was to make sure I was taking time throughout the year to really let the experiences land to sit in the moment and reflect on what had gone on, what had been overcome, the ideas that we’d had, the collaboration, the conversations, and to really show some active appreciation for the journey that we’d been on to get the result.
Maybe that took place with me just sitting on my own enjoying a cigar and reflecting for an hour. Maybe it came in the form of journaling or speaking with somebody, or actually celebrating and going out and doing something to mark the moment. This watch I’m wearing I bought it for myself when I hit a certain milestone. It was a celebration. I went out and did something for me.
And I think you make a really important point. In those moments of reflection, we can slow down and shift out of doing to being, because it’s only in the being where it’s really going to land. You’ve got to downshift in the gears. You’ve got to actually slow down, be with it, reflect on it, and let it land.
However, for some people, even if they have that practice, it still doesn’t land. Why do you think that is?
Lawrence 9:55
First of all, I really like that idea of sitting with that win when it happens, and then doing an annual reflection and stacking that win backwards. I think there’s a book I can’t remember the author now called The Gap and the Gain, and it’s all about measuring backwards. I think maybe people who aren’t able to get that satisfaction or that sense of completion, maybe they’re measuring forward. Even though they’re trying to actively reflect, there’s always this list of other things they haven’t yet accomplished. They’ve already moved on to the next thing in their head.
There’s that story of, “This was nice, but…” So I’ve succeeded here, but… If you’re a businessman, you’ve already planned for the next quarter and the next year, so you’re already living in the failure of not having completed that yet. So maybe that’s it.
Tim Matthews 11:16
I love that point counting backwards instead of forwards. I think that’s really astute.
In Australia there’s something called tall poppy syndrome. The idea is that you essentially don’t want to grow too big, and if you grow too big and stick out above the rest, you get cut down so you fall back in line. It’s a real issue in Australia, so much so that suicide is one of the leading causes of death in men.
I think that’s part of what can happen for a lot of people. Whether it’s because of religion or society or whatever it may be, they can fall into this trap of not wanting to shine too bright, of wanting to dim the light because they don’t want to come across as being arrogant. They don’t want to come across as being better than other people, especially if they have an identity whereby they’re a blue-collar guy, let’s say, a working-class guy, and there’s a lot of pride that their family takes in their working-class beginnings.
Sometimes when people start to rise above that and experience huge levels of financial success, there’s a conflict with their roots. So there’s an identity issue there. Or they fear they’re going to lose the people they love because they don’t want to come across as arrogant, so if they celebrate too much, it’s going to make other people feel bad. Obviously, it’s all a story. They don’t have any evidence of this.
And the only person that’s really losing in that scenario is them, because they’ve sacrificed so much in order to achieve financial success, yet they won’t allow themselves to enjoy it, because they think the thing that they wanted is going to cause them to lose even more.
Lawrence 13:28
You raise a really good point there. So I’m part of The Brotherhood, and in the Brotherhood we’re working through the academy. In the wealth section of the academy there are masterclasses and a huge amount of resources in all the territories, but in the wealth one, one of the first masterclasses I remember sitting on was about your relationship to money. I thought it was going to be Arthur and Etienne talking about money, talking about your relationship with money, and I thought it was going to be an investment thing. I was going to learn all about how to become a millionaire and live the life I want and all that.
Actually, do you know what he did? He went, “Right, okay, I want you to think about where you got your concept of money from.” We all did a reflection and a meditation on looking at what stories we picked up from childhood. Some people were really affected by their parents saying, “All rich people are thieves. They’ve got their money through ill-gotten gains,” or “You can’t be seen to be having wealth. It’s dirty. People take advantage of you if you put yourself up there.” It’s exactly what you’re saying.
Then from there they were able to look at those stories they’d created from very deep in their psyche. For me, it was very much something my dad said, and I’ve spoken to him about this, and he doesn’t even remember saying it. It was very much, “Don’t let money get in the way. If you want something, go and get it. Don’t worry about finances.” That led, in my early years, to being really, really bad with money. “I want this, I’m going to go and have it.” So I had to unlearn that and actually build savings and things. In business that’s quite a dangerous thought to have, but it was deep in me. It came from very early on.
I think when you get to that stage where there’s a possibility of you going, “Actually, we’ve done really well. I’ve done really well.” Not just “we,” because that’s another way of deflecting it. “We as a company have done really well.” You may have done, but actually you’ve blown it out of the park, and personally you’ve done really well. That is something you can struggle with if you’ve been programmed from an early age to not even accept it in yourself that you can be happy, let alone to put it out there to other people, because of the fear of not wanting to seem arrogant or whatever.
Tim Matthews 16:29
I asked one of the guys that I work with one-on-one a couple of weeks ago you might be afraid of being happy, like you’re scared of being happy. This guy’s successful by anyone’s measure. He’s an incredible man, and he was very honest, to his credit. He said, “I think I am,” because in order for him to allow himself to be happy, he has to admit that nothing is wrong. For so much of his life, he’s had to have his back up against the wall in order to be fighting something, because that created the drive that spurred him on to create and achieve what he’s had in his life. So in order for him to actually relax and enjoy it
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Tim Matthews 18:16
And be happy. He’s afraid he’s going to lose his drive. He’s afraid that that means there’s a loss of control that has to take place, because if he allows himself to be happy, he’s going to take down the walls. It was easier for him to have his walls up and to have someone or something to fight against and to have a reason as to why he needed to be that way. But the opposite of that I understand why this would be scary for him because there’s a letting go, there’s a surrender that then takes place in that moment for him to allow himself to actually be happy and enjoy the success he’s created.
Lawrence 18:59
I think when having your back up against the wall happens all the time, it becomes part of your personality, your self-identity, who you are as a person, your character. Without that, you lose all sense of purpose. “I’m supposed to be fighting. I’ve got to be fighting all the time.” And actually, to be able to allow someone the space and for them to recognize that working one-to-one with you has got to be a good move, because he’s then able to see something he probably wouldn’t even see himself.
I don’t think I would have seen a lot of the emotions that have come up without the language around it that TPM gives us and without the coaching. To be able to go, “Okay, that’s something I’ve taken on as kind of a character trait of me. I need to have something to fight against, otherwise I don’t feel satisfied.” It’s almost like the pain and discomfort is what brings me the satisfaction. So taking that away leaves a void. “What do I fill this with? Happiness? I can’t be happy. I haven’t got anything to fight against.” It’s like that’s a real thing.
Tim Matthews 20:18
His cycle with them is chaos. So when things were going well, let’s say at home, and there was a peacefulness that was coming about, the peacefulness would be unsettling because his nervous system was used to literally operating in chaos. Therefore, he’d find a way to create chaos. The same pattern occurred for him in business. When things were going well, his business always succeeded, but the journey was chaotic because he made it so. Anytime things were smooth sailing, he’d find a way to come in and create some kind of chaos so that his back was against the wall, and he had purpose and meaning. There were all sorts of things that went on for him he got significance from it as well because he could step in and be the hero. There was a lot going on.
Lawrence 21:16
I’m just gonna say that’s like, you know, it’s almost like a badge of honor. “I’m a disruptor. I’m a disruptor.”
Tim Matthews 21:22
Well, it sounds crazy to think that you’d do that in business, right? Because logically that isn’t what he wants to do. But emotionally, subconsciously, that’s very much what he was doing. It was a pattern. Again, it would create a situation whereby he’d have success but without fulfillment.
I think the other thing that can often go on for men is the inner critic. You kind of touched on this with the gap versus gain a minute ago. In business, the critical thinking that has to take place in order to look at what isn’t working there can be a lot of conversations going on about what isn’t working. In fairness, there can be a lot of conversations about what is working too, but most people don’t tend to have those conversations. Instead, they tend to grow the company from what needs to be fixed, what’s broken, what isn’t working.
So that inner critic, that inner judge that can work so well for them in business, if they’re not careful, then starts to show up for them personally as well. Going to one of the points you said right at the beginning “Hey, I’ve got this beach house, but it’s not that beach house.” I think that’s what can come in for men. They can have all of the trappings of success, but if that inner critic and that inner judge is there pointing out what’s missing, pointing out what’s broken, pointing out what should be better essentially why it isn’t enough they’re going to live with that void.
I think the final thing that I see come up for a lot of guys is that despite them having a huge amount of financial success, they feel like a fraud. They are waiting for the rug to be pulled from beneath them. They are waiting to be found out. They can often feel like they’ve gotten there by luck, and essentially they don’t feel worthy of it. They also feel inadequate, and they feel like they’re wearing a mask. When they’re on their own in their deepest, darkest moments, this is often what surfaces for them.
But they’ve learned to silence this part of themselves because they’ve had to push through. They’ve had to ignore it, or they’ve chosen to ignore it in the pursuit of achieving what they’ve wanted to achieve. Yet they often don’t feel too dissimilar to how they felt as a little kid. They may be a grown man right now, but their inner child is still very strong.
I think all of these things that we’re talking about, along with the lack of celebration, can rob the guys of fulfillment when it doesn’t need to be that way.
Lawrence 24:30
You can definitely get snow blind to that. If you’re not actively counting your wins and your inner critic is constantly saying this needs to be better, that needs to be better, there’s small improvement here, there’s a big improvement there, you just become blind to the wins. You don’t see them.
The other thing, as you say, is the issue of, “If I blow my trumpet about this and celebrate this, then in two weeks’ time, in a month’s time, in a year’s time, the business could fail. Then how stupid am I going to feel?” They’re always living in that story of the future. “Keep it on a level, and then if it does fail, no one knows. It’s all fine.” But living in that mindset of “the other shoe’s going to drop in a minute and everything’s going to go horribly wrong, and that’s going to make me look even more stupid because I’ve been crowing about it” it’s all story. It’s all story, but it’s very real.
How do you overcome that? And the other question I was going to ask is, is it possible to have fulfillment without success?
Tim Matthews 25:45
Or wouldn’t that be success?
Lawrence 25:48
Great answer. I think there are a lot of really happy, fulfilled people who don’t have a lot of money and don’t have a business.
Tim Matthews 25:57
For sure. For sure. 100%.
Lawrence 26:02
So what’s the… how do you get to that? How do you get to be satisfied without losing your drive to push and to excel and to be the best you can be and to create your business? How do you have that?
Tim Matthews 26:20
I think one of the key things and I’ve seen this work in thousands of men is the Alpha Reset, which obviously is a four-day experience that we lead the men through. The reason why it works so well is it gives the men the chance to dig deep within themselves and shift emotions that have been weighing them down their entire life.
The reality is what we think in the mind, we feel in the body. Emotions are meant to move. Emotion is energy in motion. We go through these experiences in life, and oftentimes the experience doesn’t leave the body. Time passes by, life goes on, and we try to outwork the inner turmoil, and it doesn’t work. It doesn’t work.
So how do you have success with fulfillment? The first thing is you’ve got to go and release and reclaim, and we do that at the Reset. Once you’ve laid the foundation, in my opinion, it’s about living intentionally. That’s why we give the guys the Chart of Intentional Living.
Living intentionally is a broad term, but there are certain practices you can do. Getting into your body is very important, whether that’s through breathwork, exercise, or other somatic practices. Getting into the body is key. Having a practice of gratitude where you actually feel grateful is important. Having moments and times where you reflect is important. Having seasons where you might work harder and seasons where you take your foot off the gas a little bit, or it looks different, where you can just have these moments.
Everything in life has a yin and a yang, an ebb and a flow. If you’ve constantly got your foot on the gas and there is no ebb and flow, it can become very tiring. Playing to the natural rhythms of life can help too.
Be, do, have that’s one of the philosophies we encourage with the men. There are lots of perspectives, practices, and ways of being that can help you have success with fulfillment without losing the drive too.
I’ve seen men become more inspired. Rather than coming from the head, where they’re trying to outwork something or run away from how they feel by achieving success which is a very heady thing, and that’s why they end up with anxiety and depression and have to drink alcohol to sedate and all those things, because the mind is so busy when they shift from the head to the heart, most guys will hear that and think, “That sounds soft.” It’s got nothing to do with softness. That’s one of the most courageous journeys you’ll ever take.
Lawrence 29:49
I was going to say, when you talk about somatic practices and breathwork and stuff, you can imagine a lot of hard-hitting businessmen in a very masculine environment, and it sounds woo-woo to them, but it isn’t. I’ve been through The Alpha Reset and the Alpha Rising, and it is so powerful to release that the body keeps the score. The body you need to move that energy through and get it out.
The other thing I think was really key that you said was about seasons. If you think about the path of flow and the path of force, and you think about the path of flow as you flow through those seasons, it almost gives permission to allow yourself to take your foot off the gas a little bit. Sometimes you’re constantly on, trying to force the next deal, force the next deal, thinking in the future, living in the future, counting ahead all the things we’ve been talking about.
I think in the path of flow, if you get yourself into that macro flow state, you can allow yourself to take that pause in the trough and count your wins and reflect, and then knowing you’re going to ramp it back up. You’re not just losing it and going, “I’ve done it now. I’ve achieved everything.” You can still continue, but you’ve got that moment of that season. I love that picture of sometimes we just need permission to celebrate, and then permission to get back on and focus again.
Tim Matthews 31:23
For sure. I think success without fulfillment often comes from the men not knowing who they are or what they want, so they feel lost. Success with fulfillment the shift that we’re talking about here ultimately the journey becomes one where he really reconnects to himself and thus discovers who he is and what he wants. Within that discovery and that journey, seasons naturally take place. That’s where the inspiration rises up, because instead of chasing every deal, you’re going to go after the deals that really excite you. There’s a depth to the action that they take. They take deep action versus busy action. It’s a different game. It’s a completely different game that you play.
I was going to say before that the point I didn’t finish I’ve not seen guys become more driven. I’ve seen them become more inspired, which has meant I’ve also seen them achieve a hell of a lot more with a lot less effort, and that’s their words. Guys that have had huge jumps in their income whilst reducing their hours in the office. It’s just a game changer. It really is.
Lawrence 32:54
In my first two years in The Brotherhood, we doubled revenue and profits every year. Now I can go away from the business for weeks at a time, and they don’t miss me, and that changed my life. It is, like you say, an entirely different game that you’re playing when you put these kinds of things into process, for sure.
Tim Matthews 33:17
And there are other stories you have to overcome at that point, like feelings of being lazy. You don’t want to be seen as being lazy, or you feel guilty, like you should be doing more, or it should be harder, or why is it so easy? It shouldn’t be this easy. But they’re good problems to have at that point.
My real hope in bringing this topic up is that I know there are men out there that are in this position of feeling successful without fulfillment, and I do believe it’s the ultimate failure because of what they have sacrificed in order to achieve that success, and to then still not feel fulfilled man, that’s such a shame. I think it’s one of the big reasons why a lot of men commit suicide. A lot of the men that we know in the movement, who in theory have it all, but have committed suicide, it’s that feeling of loneliness, that feeling of being lost, of feeling ashamed maybe because of what they’ve sacrificed, what price they’ve paid.
But I really want men to know there is another way. You can have success with fulfillment. It’s absolutely possible. You’re proof of it. There are so many men that are proof of it.
Lawrence 34:47
You just have to be intentional about recognizing it. Stopping and recognizing it and celebrating it and not feeling ashamed of it is really important.
Also, one thing that came up before was you have a goal and you achieve the goal. There’s nothing wrong with then setting a new goal. Stop, celebrate that, and then plan again. Sometimes there’s a drop-off at the end of that “I’ve done it now, what do I do next?” You become directionless.
Tim Matthews 35:17
The thing is, with success without fulfillment, men often push really hard because they think they will arrive. They think there’s an endpoint, and they want an endpoint because the journey’s so difficult. Success with fulfillment the guy realizes the journey is the destination, and there isn’t an endpoint. Why would he want there to be one? Because the aim of the game is to keep playing, and the game’s enjoyable, so why wouldn’t I want to keep playing? It looks different at different points in the match, but I want to play. I’m in.
It goes back to it being a completely different path. I know we’ve given what might sound like an ethereal perspective, so let’s leave the listeners with three actionable points. If they’re in this position of feeling successful but without fulfillment, what can they do?
Lawrence 36:32
Well, I think you said it best earlier when you talked about finding out what it is you want. Going back to basics where have you picked up your thoughts about what success means? Are you trying to live up to a parent’s expectations, or is it something that you’ve really wanted? So get clear on what success means to you, and then mark the little markers on the way to it. Don’t just wait for the big success. Mark the little successes on your route.
Your camera roll idea was great. Go back and look over your camera roll. The photos app does it for you now. You can do that during the year and then do it at the end of the year and really count backwards.
So I think those are the two things: find out what success really means to you and why where you got that belief from and then regularly stop and count your wins and reflect on your wins. See where you’ve come from and how good that feels to you, and allow that to land in your body. Connecting your heart to your head as well. It doesn’t take much to do. It’s a little bit of reflection on what you’re thinking, and then a little bit of time spent pulling those out and going, “Wow, we did that this year. We went there. That happened.” It’s a nice, easy thing to do, and it helps to set you up for not getting to what you think is the end and feeling depressed about it.
Tim Matthews 38:24
Well said. So, guys, you’ve heard it from the man himself, Wild Card, who was able to double his revenue and profits year on year whilst also taking more time off. It’s completely possible, and there are many guys in the movement that have done the same.
If you do want to find out more about how we might be able to help, then just get in touch. But until then, thank you for tuning in, and we’ll see you next time on the TPM Show.