The Scarcity Beneath Success

Many senior executives we work with reach a point where their external circumstances – title, income, scope, influence – have far outpaced their internal ones. This divergence often begins early, sometimes with the first promotion. Responsibility expands, expectations increase, and the terrain of a leader’s life grows wider. But most leaders respond by building a more cognitively sophisticated version of themselves, not a more internally resourced one. The result is a life that looks expansive on paper but feels strangely thin when lived from the inside.

At some point, many leaders quietly wonder: How did my life get so full – and yet feel so unfulfilling?

It’s as if we’ve been rewarded for acquiring more land – more territory, more authority, more visibility – without ever stopping to ask whether that land is fertile. We keep expanding the perimeter, assuming that more ground will eventually yield more fulfillment. And when it doesn’t, we double down. Over time, a protective narrative forms. Anything that tends to the soil – nervous system regulation, emotional processing, trauma-informed work – gets dismissed as “soft” or unnecessary. Yet the executives I work with who’ve neglected this inner terrain are often stuck. 

They don’t savor their lives. 
They make poorer decisions under pressure. 
They miss important interpersonal signals because they’ve lost access to felt sense and intuition. 
They’re standing on vast acreage, but nothing is growing.

The cost shows up everywhere. Leaders who are internally depleted struggle to model a healthy version of success. Instead, they unintentionally normalize stress, emotional distance, and performative balance. The cultural promise that we can “have it all” only reinforces the problem – more family time, more health optimization, more success – mistaken for balance because the boxes are checked. 

But checking boxes doesn’t enrich the soil. Any system that’s out of balance eventually degrades, and organizations are no exception. Productivity, economic viability, and employee wellbeing all suffer when the person at the center is operating from internal scarcity.

The work, then, is not about expanding the terrain further. It’s about realizing that there is already enough land – and turning toward it with care. When leaders invest in their internal circumstances, they begin to cultivate what they already have. Seeds get planted. Green shoots appear. There’s a renewed relationship to self, a deeper capacity to connect with others, and a clearer sense of what truly matters. From this place, leaders stop chasing more and start stewarding well. And what grows from that – personally, relationally, organizationally – is often far richer than anything the next expansion could have promised.

The question many leaders eventually face is not whether this inner work matters, but how to begin. 

Most of us were never taught how to tend our internal terrain – only how to keep producing, expanding, and performing. Doing this work alone can feel vague or even disorienting, especially for people who are used to clarity, competence, and forward motion.

This is why intentional spaces matter. Not to be fixed, optimized, or improved – but to be met. To slow down enough to notice what’s actually happening beneath the surface. To have a skilled partner alongside you who understands the unique pressures of leadership and can help you cultivate internal capacity with the same rigor you’ve applied to your external success.

If you find yourself recognizing pieces of your own experience in these words, consider what it might be like to do this work alongside others who are asking similar questions – supported by coaches trained to work with the inner lives of leaders, not just their performance.

Not as another expansion.
But as a return to the ground you’re already standing on.