After You’ve Arrived

Ten minutes into our first session, Dara uttered: "I think something is wrong with me."

Six months earlier, she achieved what she’d worked toward for eleven years. She’d landed the dream promotion, the title and pay, and a strong team. By every measure that mattered to her, she had arrived. She was settling well into the challenges of her new role. And she liked the work and the people.

But she felt flat. She caught herself watching the clock in meetings she used to look forward to. Instead of her usual joy with each new accomplishment, she felt nothing when they were finished. She didn’t seem ungrateful or depressed, but worried that she’d lost her zeal.

I recognized what she was describing.  It’s common among high-functioning people but little discussed:  Having finally achieved what she'd been striving for, she discovered  that reaching had felt more alive than arriving.

It was a signal that her current vision wasn’t large enough to hold all she had to offer.

People with high capability often have high ambition too. Forward motion, reaching high, or building toward something is what makes them feel most alive and most like themselves. This is a core part of how they engage with the world.

But there’s a hidden cost to having competence. They rarely slow down and ask what the drive is actually for. The markers, promotion, title, recognition, impact, are always there to refuel them and new goals emerge each time one is achieved. 

Until it stops.

What Dara was missing now was the part of herself that was excited by a desirable goal that was currently just out of reach. Ambition, the drive itself, doesn’t notice that your container might be too small. It simply feels constrained and pushes against it.

I know this from the inside.

At thirty-two I had a corner office, a staff of eight, and a Director title I'd worked hard to earn. Within a year I was feeling bored. I felt I had more capacity and didn’t relish the idea of waiting the expected five or six more years for a possible VP slot. I also couldn't imagine coping with periods of great restlessness like this for the rest of my career.

I was basically a potted plant that had outgrown its pot. So, I went back to school, got a doctorate, and moved into higher education where the container could expand more and at the rate I wanted. The drive sought out a structure that could grow with it. That was one answer bit certainly not the only one.

When we see that the drive we have is part of us, and that we need to feed it indefinitely, the question changes.

It stops being: what's wrong with me? And becomes: what does this engine actually need now? 

what Repotting Looks Like

There is no single answer to this.  And people who’re very competent often try to solve this the way they've solved everything else:  they quickly seek a clear path toward another measurable outcome.

But there are times in life that require pivots. As Dara found, it can happen by reaching the top of the ladder you’ve been climbing. Others find they want a different type of challenge because they’re tired of one line of work. Or their capability peaks out but they still want more growth.  And, for many people, retirement is an important pivot.

The challenge of figuring out how to apply the drive in in these situations requires a different kind of attention. What new goals, direction, or purpose call to you?

The paths are genuinely varied. Some people change fields entirely. Some build something of their own. Some find the answer in contribution that carries no title: mentoring, writing, showing up for causes that need exactly what decades of capability have produced. What they share is the willingness to take the signal seriously enough to let it point somewhere real, rather than filling the restlessness with busyness and calling that an answer.

What these paths share is a question most high-capability people have rarely had to ask. Not: what do I want to achieve? But: what does the drive itself want to become?

The absence of an obvious answer is itself the necessary condition for finding a container that actually fits.

The engine doesn't stop. It waits to be pointed at something worth running toward.

And the reaching, when it begins again, feels exactly like what it always felt like. Most alive when moving toward something real

Practice Invitation

Think about a moment when the reaching felt more alive than the arriving, when the drive was pointed at something and the pointing itself was the energy.

Now ask honestly: where is that drive pointed right now?

If the answer comes easily, notice what it's telling you about where you still want to go. If what surfaces instead is a restlessness you haven't quite named, sit with that without reaching for a solution. The restlessness isn't the problem. It's the signal.

Ask: what container am I in right now? And is it still large enough to hold what I'm carrying?

The engine is still running. The question is what it's worth running toward next.

And that’s The Gist of It™.

Thank you for reading.

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Marilyn Gist