Success is driven by unhappiness

“Success is driven by unhappiness.” That’s the view of Alain de Botton, the British philosopher, author and trained psychotherapist.

In a podcast interview with Richard Bacon, De Botton argued that behind most great achievements sits an equally great dissatisfaction:

“All outsize achievements are powered by an outsize problem and you can always tell what the problem is by looking at what the thing is that they’re achieving, so somebody who makes a lot of money, obviously, is labouring under an incredible sense of deprivation.”

Bacon asked if Elon Musk is powered by unhappiness. “Of course.” What about Donald Trump? “Of course. A kind of restlessness. This is the paradox: that we associate happiness with achievement.”

We assume people who achieve great things must be happy, or that the achievement will make them happy. But what if it’s the other way round?

De Botton’s view is that people who are genuinely content with themselves rarely end up famous. They don’t need to. “They felt seen without being famous,” as he puts it. Even the urge to appear on a podcast can come from “a sense of invisibility” and, broadly, “a lack of love”. Bacon asked whether fame is about a lack of love. De Botton replies, “Of course.”

The driving force

De Botton traces much of this back to childhood.

“If you were fully at ease, you wouldn’t get out of bed. The drive to success is something itching you.”

He says it helps if your parents die or go bankrupt at a key age, or if they don’t seem to like you much. He didn’t have the first two, but Bacon pointed out he did have the last one. His dad wasn’t keen on him. “Yes, exactly.”

The same idea came up on another podcast, Giant Ideas, where the host said that when they do due diligence on entrepreneurs, they dig into childhood, and trauma is often a driver of extraordinary entrepreneurship. De Botton isn’t keen on the word trauma. It means too many things. He prefers to talk about the need to be loved and valued. Children are completely dependent on their caregivers, and we’re all programmed to know that if we don’t secure the love of those around us, we’re in great danger.

Some kids get parents who love them simply for existing. Others get parents who are busy, distracted, depressed, alcoholic or absent. Even a parent dying can be read by a child as rejection:

“Being dead is a way of being very, very unimpressed. That’s how the child reads it. Like, well, my parent didn’t stick around. They died. Why? Well, I wasn’t worth sticking around for.”

So the child grows up feeling they weren’t good enough and have something to prove. “The greater the doubt, the greater the effort to show this parent.” It doesn’t always lead to conventional success either. Some become high achievers. Others turn to shoplifting or graffiti. Different outlets, same bid for attention.

The bit that stuck with me is what happens when you finally get what you were chasing. De Botton doesn’t think it’s ever enough.

“When people say ‘Don’t retire,’ what I think is really meant psychologically is ‘Don’t stop.’ Because if you stop, you will notice that you’ve been trying to fill a hole which can’t be filled, and you will fall prey to such despair and such agony that it might kill you.”

It’s not boredom that gets you in retirement, he says. It’s sadness. Success keeps unhappiness at bay. There’s always another target, another business, another milestone, and while you’re busy chasing it, you don’t have to look at what’s underneath.

The hidden motivation

I can see where De Botton is coming from, and I think it goes beyond childhood trauma and extraordinary achievements. I believe that ordinary, everyday unhappiness can also be a hidden motivation that influences our behaviour.

Take giving up smoking. Some twenty years ago, when I was still a smoker, what finally got me to stop wasn’t the thought of better health or a longer life. It was a cold, and the cough that always came with it. I couldn’t stand feeling ill. I wasn’t drawn towards the benefits of quitting. I was pushed by how miserable smoking made me feel.

I suspect it’s the same with most addictions. Someone giving up drinking probably isn’t chasing sobriety so much as running from the misery the drink has caused. Same with losing weight. We say we’re going to the gym for our health, but maybe we just don’t like how we feel about our bodies.

There are many other examples this could apply to. How about the person who works endless hours — are they really that passionate about the job? Perhaps. Or perhaps they’re lonely, or missing someone, and work gives them something to focus on so they don’t have to think about it.

The same goes for the person who’s obsessed with health: training every day, tracking calories, supplements, blood tests, longevity routines. Or the one who’s forever renovating the house. Or the one who’s constantly researching and buying slightly better versions of things they already own.

Sport is another. I enjoy watching it as much as anyone, but some people take it to another level, following every transfer and analysing every result, with their mood rising and falling on a team’s fortunes. Then there’s social media, the posting and checking and scrolling. Is it just an addiction, or is it filling a void? And the news. We all know someone permanently preoccupied with politics and world events, with next to no influence over any of it.

To be clear, I’m not saying any of this is unhealthy. The gym, the house, the football can all be perfectly enjoyable, and ambition doesn’t mean you’re unhappy. Some people simply like a challenge. But it’s worth asking: do I actually enjoy this, or is it stopping me thinking about something I’m unhappy with?

That’s the difficulty. Admitting you’re unhappy leads to uncomfortable questions. Maybe you don’t like your career. Maybe you’re unhappy in your relationship. Maybe you’ve spent years chasing goals that, when you think about it, don’t matter that much to you. Admit that and you might have to make difficult decisions, disappoint people, or accept you’ve spent years going in the wrong direction. It’s much easier to stay busy.

When I think back to living in London, working an office job I found unbearable, I suspect I’d just got used to being unhappy. I’d been dissatisfied for so long, emotionally flat for years, that it started to feel normal. Maybe I thought that’s just what life felt like.

Holidays were a good example, and I suspect others will recognise this. There’s nothing wrong with looking forward to a holiday. But there’s a difference between looking forward to it because you love travelling and counting down the days because you can’t wait to escape your life. If you’re reasonably happy, a holiday is a bonus. If you’re not, it becomes about getting away from where you are. And the feeling never lasts. A few days after you’re back, you’re in the same routine, doing the same job, dealing with the same frustrations, and you’re already looking at flights for the next one.

Looking back, that was me. I did love travelling, but I was also looking forward to getting away from the life I had at home.

Boredom is a milder form of the same thing. It’s useful, too. It nudges us to try something new or just get up and do something. But there’s a big difference between telling someone you’re bored and telling them you’re unhappy. Everyone’s happy to say they’re bored. Saying you’re unhappy means admitting the life you’ve built isn’t making you as happy as you’d like to believe. Social media doesn’t help. Everyone else seems to be having a great time, so admitting you’re not makes you feel like the odd one out.

Maybe we should treat unhappiness less as something to eliminate and more as a signal. Physical pain tells you something needs attention, and I think unhappiness does the same. Rather than suppressing it, ask what it’s telling you.

It might also change how you think about your ambitions. Instead of only asking what we want to achieve, we could ask what’s driving us to achieve it. Are we moving towards something we genuinely value, or running away from something we’d rather not face?

Because if the underlying problem is still there, hitting the goal won’t fix it. The dissatisfaction will creep back, and we’ll be off looking for the next thing.

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If you liked reading this, here’s something I wrote with a similar theme: