If you’ve ever wondered why high achievers feel lonely, even when life looks successful to the outside world, this is the edition for you. It’s very common… more than you may realize. Allow me to share why.
I was listening to a podcast interview with Dr. Arthur Brooks, a Harvard professor, social scientist, and one of the world’s leading researchers on human happiness. And about five minutes in, I had this moment where I just started smiling to myself.
Because what he was sharing about the research, the framework, the conclusions he’s spent decades arriving at, lined up almost exactly with the work I’ve been doing with clients for years. And more ironically, with the upcoming episode of Beyond the Gray that I recorded weeks ago that drops this Tuesday.
I didn’t have his data when I recorded it. I hadn’t heard this interview. I was just going off what I’ve seen, lived, and worked through with real people in real gray areas.
And yet here was a Harvard professor saying the same things with peer-reviewed research behind him.
That felt worth sharing. It just proves things are rarely a coincidence.
The Thing Nobody Talks About at the Top
Dr. Brooks said something in that interview that I agree wholeheartedly.
He said the loneliest people he has ever met are high achievers.
Not struggling people. Not people with nothing. High achievers. Leaders. People who have done everything right by every external measure.
And I want to sit with that for a second. Because if you’re someone who has built something, (a career, a business, a life that looks impressive from the outside), and you still feel like something is quietly missing… that feeling has a name. And it’s more common than you think.
Researchers call it the “striver’s curse.” The higher you climb, the higher your expectations for yourself become. And no amount of achievement closes that gap. It just raises the bar again.
So you keep going. You keep building. And yet, the feeling doesn’t go away.
Not because something is wrong with you. But because you’ve been trying to fill a gap that success was never designed to fill with successes.
What the Science Says We Actually Need
Here’s what Dr. Brooks found after decades of research into what genuinely makes human beings happy and fulfilled.
Yes, high achievers can indeed feel lonely, despite their outward success. So, it’s not the money. Not the status. Not the next level of achievement.
It comes down to four things that he refers to as: faith, family, friendship, and work that serves others.
Now if that sounds familiar to you, it’s because it maps almost exactly onto what I call the Core Four in my own work — Body, Being, Balance, and Business. The areas of life that, when they’re aligned, change everything. And the one that holds all the others together, Being, is exactly what this week’s episode is about.
What strikes me about Dr. Brooks’ list is what every item on it has in common. Connection. To other people. To community. To something greater than yourself.
We were not built to do this life alone. And that’s not a soft sentiment or a motivational poster quote. That is biology. We are built for connection.
The Data That Should Stop All of Us Cold
In 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General released an 82-page advisory declaring loneliness and social isolation a full public health crisis in America.
Here are the numbers that hit me hardest:
- Social connection is a significant predictor of longevity and better physical, cognitive, and mental health, while social isolation and loneliness are significant predictors of premature death and poor health.
- The mortality impact of being socially disconnected is similar to that caused by smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day!
- That’s even greater than the risks associated with obesity and physical inactivity.
- Poor social relationships can increase your risk of heart disease by 29% and stroke by 32%.
- Among older adults, chronic loneliness and social isolation can increase the risk of developing dementia by approximately 50%.
Read that again.
Loneliness isn’t just uncomfortable. It is physically, measurably dangerous!
And yet we live in a culture that rewards self-sufficiency above almost everything else. We celebrate the person who handles it all. We quietly judge the person who admits they need help. We’ve built entire identities around not needing anyone.
The science says we’ve had it completely backwards.
The Gray Area Nobody Names
Here’s what I keep coming back to in my own work, and what connects all of this to the gray areas I talk about every week.
Most people who feel that low-grade emptiness don’t identify it as loneliness. They don’t identify it as disconnection. They just know something feels off. Life looks fine. But it doesn’t quite feel fine.
And because they can’t name it, they do what capable people do. They push through it. They get busier. They reach for something to take the edge off at the end of the day. They tell themselves it’s just a hard season and it’ll pass.
But it doesn’t pass. Because the issue was never the season.
The issue is that we were wired for connection, to each other and to something bigger than ourselves, and somewhere along the way, in all the striving and achieving and handling, that connection got put aside.
That’s a gray area. Not dramatic. Not a crisis. Just a slow fade away from something essential.
And like most gray areas, the longer you ignore it, the louder it gets.
Three Small Things Worth Trying This Week
If any of this landed for you, here are three things the research consistently points to as genuinely moving the needle:
Have one real conversation. Not a surface-level check-in. An actual conversation where you ask someone how they’re really doing and you wait for the real answer. Connection is built in those moments, not grand gestures.
Put the phone away at dinner. I know you’ve heard it before. But the research on what even a phone sitting on the table does to the quality of connection between two people is striking. Your presence is the most valuable thing you can give the people you love.
Get still enough to ask the harder question. Even five minutes. Even just sitting with: What am I actually here for? What truly matters to me right now? You don’t need the answer yet. Just stop running from the question long enough to let it breathe.
This Week on Beyond the Gray
Speaking of that harder question — this week’s episode goes right into the heart of it.
I recorded it a few weeks ago, before I ever heard Dr. Brooks’ interview this last Friday. And yet here we are, talking about the same things from completely different directions. Which honestly just tells me this conversation is one a lot of people need to be having right now.
The episode is about the Being pillar of the Core Four, your internal world, your sense of who you are, and what it means to stop carrying everything alone. It’s personal. It’s honest. And I think it’s going to meet you exactly where you are this week.
Find it wherever you listen to podcasts, or watch on YouTube and Spotify.
And finally, if you’re successful but find yourself lonely on a level you weren’t able to name until today, would you share it with me? I’m working on a new project that will bring us together in community… one that will close many of these gaps.
Here’s to living beyond the gray,
Kari
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P.S. About half of U.S. adults report feeling lonely. Which means someone in your life almost certainly needed to read this today. Forward this email if it moved you. You might be surprised who it reaches.
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