The Silence After the Achievement: When There's No One to Tell
"Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes." -Carl Jung
You got the promotion. Closed the deal. Hit the number. Posted the win.
And then. Deafening silence.
Not the good kind. Not the satisfied quiet of a job well done. The hollow kind. The kind that echoes back at 3 AM when you're staring at the ceiling wondering why the thing you wanted doesn't feel like anything at all.
Here's what nobody tells you: This isn't a you problem. This is a culture problem.
Lost in a Broken Culture
John Vervaeke calls it the Meaning Crisis.
These weren't soft, optional extras. They were the architecture of meaning itself.
Then the modern world dismantled them.
What replaced them? Metrics. Titles. Net worth. The corner office. We were handed a new religion—achievement—and told that if we worked hard enough, climbed high enough, earned enough, we would feel it. That sense of arrival. That sense of mattering.
Most men find themselves lost. Lost in a broken culture. Lost in a fallen world. Not because they failed the system—but because the system was never designed to deliver what it promised. It was designed to produce output, not meaning. Efficiency, not aliveness. Performance, not wholeness.
So you performed. And performed. And performed.
And the silence got louder.
The Golden Ball You Lost
Robert Bly tells the story of a boy who plays with a golden ball in the forest. It's his favorite thing; that radiant, alive feeling kids have naturally. Then he loses it down a well. He tries everything to get it back. Nothing works. Eventually he discovers a wild man locked in a cage at the bottom. Iron John. Terrifying. Hairy. Everything "civilized" people aren't supposed to be.
Here's the secret: the wild man has your golden ball.
You've spent years building the life that looks perfect on paper. The title, the income, the stability. All the things the "good boy" is supposed to want. But somewhere along the way, you lost the golden ball—that feeling of being truly, undeniably alive. And now you're performing for an audience that never shows up, seeking validation from a father who's never coming, trying to earn permission that doesn't exist.
The loneliness isn't from being alone. It's from being surrounded by people who see your achievement but don't see you. Who celebrate your performance but have no idea what's happening underneath. Who ask "What's next?" when you're still trying to figure out what just happened.
Here's the belief that's running your life without your permission: That external validation will eventually fill the hole inside. That if you just achieve enough, earn enough, prove enough, the emptiness will finally go away.
It won't.
"Depression is not a sign of weakness. It is a sign that you have been trying to be strong for too long." -James Hollis
The second belief: That you're broken for feeling this way. That successful men don't have these thoughts. That you should be grateful, push through, keep climbing.
You're not broken. You're uninitiated. You're operating from borrowed authority—living by rules you never chose, chasing goals that aren't yours, performing a role that keeps the real you locked in a cage.
The Void Is Not Your Enemy
"The chief task of the second half of life is not achievement but the recovery of the soul." -James Hollis
Here's what Vervaeke understood that most self-help misses entirely: the void is not a problem to be solved. It's a signpost to be followed.
The 3 AM silence. The hollow feeling after the win. The question you can't shake: Is this actually my life? These aren't symptoms of failure. They are the beginning of awakening.
In the old traditions, this moment had a name. It was the threshold. The place where the boy's old world stops working and the man's world hasn't yet begun. Every genuine initiation starts here—in the discomfort, in the not-knowing, in the crack where the old story breaks open.
The crisis you're feeling is not the end. It is the door.
Most men do everything they can to avoid walking through it. They work harder. They drink more. They scroll longer. They buy something. They chase the next milestone. Anything to fill the silence, to outrun the void, to avoid the terrifying question underneath it all: Who am I when I'm not performing?
But the void doesn't go away. It waits. And it will keep waiting—at 3 AM, in the quiet after the celebration, in the space between what you've built and what you actually feel. Until you stop running and turn to face it.
Awakening Is the Response
"The task of midlife is not to become what we were supposed to be, but to become who we actually are." -James Hollis
The path out isn't more achievement. It's integration.
In the story, the boy has to steal the key from under his mother's pillow to free Iron John. It's a necessary betrayal. He has to leave the safety of the castle, go into the forest, and learn what the wild man knows. Not to become wild, but to become whole.
Vervaeke calls this awakening: not a retreat from the world, but a return to genuine meaning-making. A reclamation of the inner authority that the culture told you to outsource. A reconnection to the part of you that knows, not the part that performs.
This is the transformation: from trapped achiever to awakened leader. From performing for approval to operating from inner authority. From "successful on paper, hollow inside" to integrated—achievement and aliveness, together, finally.
No one is going to tell you it's okay to trust yourself. No authority figure will validate your decision to stop needing their validation. Your boss won't hand you the key. Your partner can't free the wild man for you.
You have to steal the key.
What This Work Actually Is
This is what we do in my coaching intensive. Not another productivity system. Not more tactics layered on top of an already exhausted man.
We remove the anxiety and emotional weight blocking your clarity and self-trust. We dissolve the limiting beliefs that have been running your life without your permission—the ones the culture installed, the ones your father modeled, the ones you've been too busy achieving to question. We develop the awareness that reconnects you to your own wisdom—the part that knows, the part that doesn't need permission.
The wild man isn't your enemy. He's the part of you that's been waiting to come alive. The golden ball comes back not because you earned it, but because you integrated what you've been running from.
You don't have to burn down your life. But you do have to reclaim your authority over it.
If you're ready to stop performing and start living, join the waitlist. Six months. One-on-one. It's the awakening you've been circling for years.
The silence doesn't have to last forever.
-Alex
P.S. — Not ready to start your journey? Start with the alignment assessment. It's free. No performance required. Just show up as you are.
