The Wealth of Nations

The unsustainable weight of the modern workplace We are currently navigating a profound crisis of purpose that has quieted the traditional rhythms of human connection. Historically, individuals derived their sense of meaning and community from a diverse portfolio of "stocks": church membership, bowling leagues, neighborhood social circles, and extended family units. Today, as these civic and religious institutions have receded, we have consolidated our emotional expectations into two fragile pillars: our jobs and our romantic partners. We are asking our workplaces to be our community, our social life, our moral compass, and our source of spiritual fulfillment. This is a burden the workplace was never designed to carry. When we demand that a job provides everything—from a paycheck to a political identity—we set it up for an inevitable failure. This over-reliance creates a sense of profound malaise when work, as it often does, becomes just work. In my sessions, I often see this manifest as a quiet desperation. You feel lost not because you lack ambition, but because you lack a foundation that exists independently of your professional output. We must recognize that the search for meaning is an objective process, one that requires us to diversify where we seek belonging. Relying on a single person or institution to be your "everything" is a recipe for isolation. Why true friendship requires sitting in the mud One of the most damaging mistakes we make in modern relationships is the rush to fix. When a friend is struggling—perhaps they’ve been fired or are grieving a breakup—our cultural instinct is to offer "actionable advice" or relentless positivity. We say, "Just get back out there," or "Success is the best revenge." While well-intentioned, this approach is often a form of emotional avoidance. It suggests that the person’s pain is a problem to be solved rather than an experience to be felt. True resilience is built when we have the courage to "sit in the mud" with someone. Sitting in the mud means offering a safe space where the other person’s "not-okayness" doesn't make you uncomfortable. Simon%20Sinek notes that the most powerful thing a friend can say is, "This really hurts, and I’m here with you." This meets emotion with emotion rather than trying to overwrite feelings with rational facts. We often forget that we are both rational and emotional animals. Facts belong in the neocortex, but behavior and feeling reside in the limbic brain, which has no capacity for language. When someone is in an emotional state, bringing facts to the table is like speaking a foreign language. Wait for the adrenaline to subside before moving to the rational. Leadership and friendship are not about having the answers; they are about ensuring no one feels alone while they search for them. The reverse Frankl law and the workaholic's cope Viktor%20Frankl famously argued that when men lack meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure. However, we are seeing a rise in the inverse: when individuals struggle to access joy, ease, or playfulness, they distract themselves with "meaning." This manifests as a hyper-fixation on hard things—cold plunges at 5:00 AM, endless productivity hacks, and a puritanical work ethic that views any moment of rest as a moral failure. This is the "LeBron James of the marshmallow test," where delayed gratification is practiced so perpetually that gratification never actually arrives. If you find yourself unable to enjoy a slow Sunday without a crushing sense of guilt, you may be using "purpose" as a shield against the vulnerability of simple joy. It is a sophisticated form of coping. We convince ourselves that being "serious" and "growth-minded" makes us superior, but if we are exchange our entire lives for a bank account of accomplishments we never withdraw from, what have we actually won? I believe the most "secure" high performers are those who pay as much attention to how they show up for their friends as they do to their supplement stack. Balance isn't a finish line; it’s the willingness to admit that sometimes, being a "vegetable" on the couch is exactly what you need to recharge your human battery. Confusing mile markers with the destination High achievers often fall into the trap of confusing their goals with their purpose. An Olympic%20Games athlete like Michael%20Phelps or Andre%20Agassi might spend decades believing their "why" is to win a gold medal or a Grand Slam. But a goal is a mile marker; a purpose is immutable. When these athletes retire, they often spiral into depression because they have lost their goal, mistakenly believing they have lost their identity. Your "why" is fully formed by your late teens—it is the core of who you are, whether you are writing a book, leading a team, or raising a family. Your job is simply one of many vehicles for bringing your purpose to life. For Sinek, the purpose is to inspire people; writing Start%20With%20Why was just one way to do it. When we decouple our identity from our specific achievements, we find the freedom to fail. Failure becomes a gift because it is no longer an indictment of our worth. If you are comfortable being a "failure" in the pursuit of a massive, audacious vision, you are free to take risks that others wouldn't dare. You realize that you’ve already won simply by being in the game. The activist energy of Gen Z While Millennials were often criticized for "slacktivism," Gen%20Z is emerging as a generation of true activists. They are not just tweeting; they are striking, protesting, and running for office at 25. This willingness to take accountability and make sacrifices for their beliefs is a powerful shift. However, they face a unique challenge: a level of technology-induced loneliness that is more pronounced than in any previous generation. They are the first to grow up with the dopamine-hijacking systems of social media as their primary social interface. My advice to this younger generation is to resist the cult of rugged individualism that has poisoned modern capitalism. We have built incentive structures that reward individual glory over team success, but human beings are social animals designed for cooperation. The "biohack" of the century isn't a new app or a chemical compound; it’s friendship. It is the commitment to a life of service where you help someone else navigate the very thing you are struggling with. When you lead by going first—by being the one to say, "I am lost"—you create the safe space that allows others to follow. This is the heart of the infinite game. Cultivating the courage to be human Growth happens when we stop pretending we have everything under control. The most effective leaders I know are those who walk into a room during a crisis and admit they are stressed and worried, but express confidence in the team's ability to navigate it together. This isn't weakness; it’s vulnerability, and it’s the only way to build trust. If you are feeling paralyzed by fear or stuck in your journey, stop looking inward and start looking outward. Find someone else who is stuck and offer them your hand. We must move away from the binary of winning and losing, or crushing and failing. Life is a messy, beautiful, tangled ball of string. Your job isn't to untangle it all today; it's to enjoy the process of working on one knot at a time. Be a good friend to yourself. Keep the promises you make to yourself with the same fervor you would for a best friend. Give yourself grace. The more we lean into our shared humanity and the consistency of small, innocuous acts of love, the more we find the purpose that was there all along. You were never meant to do this alone.