Why Successful People Are Lonely

Being a senior leader or a successful entrepreneur can leave you with a feeling of loneliness and lacking in social connections. It seems that reaching for the top is a lonely business for the majority of people, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Taking a closer look at why successful people are lonely is the best way to understand how you can align with your priorities and create better relationships with the people who matter the most.

Have you ever heard the saying, “It’s lonely at the top?” 

Although this saying is not true for everyone, it does suggest that loneliness can be a byproduct of rising to the top of the success ladder. 

In the book Lonely at the Top: The High Cost of Men’s Success, there is a discussion of the correlation between loneliness and the most successful people as they neglect quality engagement in social relationships in order to prioritize success and achievement at the cost of their mental health.  

As you strive for success and become great at what you do, it is true that personal relationships tend to change. The way you think and feel must evolve in order to become the person that is capable of the level of success you are striving for in your life. However, this does not need to be at the cost of having a difficult time in other areas of your life. 

This book specifically considered men’s success; however, there are a lot of factors that also need to be considered as it relates to women when it comes to this topic. In fact, even in the last 50 years, women had to continue to overcome the obstacles of societal judgment as they simply began to work outside of the home. 

Public Perceptions

Thinking about these judgments always brings me back to a conversation I had with a patient while working in a rehabilitation hospital.  

As an Occupational Therapist, I was helping a patient in the hospital improve her strength following a procedure. As usual, my life was a little crazy. I was in school getting my Ph.D., working full-time, pregnant, and with a 5-month-old baby at home. This particular day was challenging as, once again, my little one was sick, which seemed to be a constant occurrence. I was frantically trying to figure out how to rearrange my schedule so I could pick up my son. 

There were many times I felt as if I wasn’t a good enough employee or mom. I was making choices that didn’t really feel aligned one way or another. However, something different happened on this particular day.

My patient was completing the exercises as I went to take a phone call, arranging for patient coverage. As I returned to check on her, she said something interesting, “Sometimes I feel like we just didn’t do right by you.” 

I was a little taken aback, and didn’t really understanding what she was saying. So I asked her to explain a bit more. “We fought so hard to get women like you out of the home, so that you could go out and do what you wanted to do. However, it seems that what we really did was create a circumstance where you have to do everything, and it is an impossible job to complete.”

I paused, thought for a moment, and replied, “I respectfully have to disagree. I love every part of being an occupational therapist and being a mom. It doesn’t always feel easy, but it doesn’t mean I don’t love doing it all.”

Making Better Decisions

That conversation brought up the concept of doing it all.

Wearing all the hats, checking all the boxes, crushing all the goals, and becoming the great success on the outside that I knew I was aligned to be on the inside.

However, success and a good career doesn’t need to be at the cost of sacrificing my family. Being a great mom doesn’t need to be at the cost of sacrificing my dreams of success. 

It is possible to have it all, including strong relationships with friends and family. It doesn’t have to be lonely at the top. The simple solution is to prioritize alignment in every aspect of your life.  

In working with a multi-million dollar business owner, I have watched her evolve over time and put fulfillment before her success. Doing so has led to deeper connections, greater opportunities, and more reliability on a personal level. This has ultimately led to being a very successful person in business at a much faster rate than other entrepreneurs while being a present wife and mother.

It isn’t always the natural choice to prioritize alignment, and really, the concept of alignment is often misunderstood. It isn’t always going to feel easy. In fact, it will feel downright uncomfortable. But the most important thing to remember is that you get to get to choose to make your close friends and family just as much a priority as your professional life.  

Alignment is Key

As you become more comfortable doing the uncomfortable things, incredible things start to happen! It becomes obvious that doing it all is not only possible but is really the only way to hit your goals while also discovering new and deeper levels of true happiness.  

If you are climbing the ladder of success, but it feels scary, or you have feelings of loneliness, it’s time for you to shift your thinking before you climb one more rung. Understanding why successful people are lonely is quite easy, and the results are incredibly fast when you choose alignment rather than constant distraction. It gets to feel like ease and flow while still creating the incredibly successful results that make you the driven human being you are. 

Allow for strategic alignment to become the next super tool that takes you to that next level of success. Book an Alignment Strategy Session to learn how you can get a clear perspective on how to be the aligned woman you want to be.