At some point, many men feel that they no longer want to be where they are. Not just in a certain job, a certain company, a role or an everyday routine, but in a version of their life that once made sense and has now become too narrow. From the outside, everything often looks stable: The calendar is full, the salary comes in, the tasks are clear, you function, deliver and, at best, are reliable. Perhaps even so reliable that no one notices how empty it really feels on the inside. But you notice it. You notice it on Mondays, and not as a small resistance, but as heaviness. As this feeling of having to get through something before it has even begun. You notice it in conversations in which you are present, but no longer really there. You notice it when you are exhausted in the evening, even though nothing really lively has happened. And you notice it in those quiet moments when the question suddenly arises as to whether this should seriously be your life now: persevere, deliver, rest briefly, persevere again. Is that it?
And yet you stay. Not because you have to, but because you tell yourself that there’s no other way. You need a plan first. More money. An investor for your self-employment. The right time. You can’t do this to the team, you can’t expect it of your family, you can’t explain it to the company. You still have to complete this project, get through this phase, resolve this uncertainty. That may all sound reasonable. And sometimes it is. Responsibility is nothing small and should be taken seriously. You can’t respond to every discomfort with a radical cut. You don’t have to throw in the towel just because you’re tired. But this is precisely where the danger lies: reason can very quickly become the best excuse. She wears a clean shirt, speaks calmly, sounds grown-up and still keeps you in a place where you can no longer grow.
There are reasons and there are stories. Reasons are clear. They have substance, can be tested and help you make a good decision. Stories, on the other hand, keep you quiet. They go round in circles. They sound the same every year and seem logical, but they don’t lead anywhere if you’re honest. They don’t protect you from making a mistake, they protect you from moving. Many men are masters at building stories like this. They have learned that control is safer than desire and that functioning brings more recognition than questions. They have often been taught that you can only change something once you have thought everything through, secured, calculated and approved it. Preferably by everyone. Just not by yourself.
This contradiction is often particularly evident in CEOs. People who manage companies, make decisions, assess risks, read markets and move teams – on the outside, they appear courageous. On the inside, many of them sit in a very gilded cage. They have built up a lot, so they have a lot to lose, bear a lot of responsibility and are overwhelmed with a lot of projection from the outside. And at some point, it is no longer clear whether they are still shaping or just defending. A CEO can lead a company and still be stuck in their own life – one does not exclude the other. He can present strategies for the next five years and at the same time not know why he has hardly any energy left in the morning. He can talk about innovation and avoid any real change in his private life. He can motivate other people to be courageous and have been standing on an inner threshold for years. And not because he is weak, but because success can sometimes be the most elegant form of captivity.
Because the more you have achieved, the harder it often becomes to honestly admit that it no longer fits. If you have nothing, it’s easier to say: I’ll try something else. If you have a lot, every change requires explanation. Why do you want out if everything is working? Why do you want to start something new if you’re already at the top? Why are you dissatisfied when others want exactly what you have? Then the inner betrayal begins. You tell yourself that you should be grateful, that others have it harder, that it’s complaining on a high level, that you should pull yourself together. Maybe you just need a vacation, more exercise, less coffee, more discipline, a better mindset. Maybe a coach, but no real upheaval, please. But deep down, you know: It’s not about a vacation or a change of scenery. It’s about a part of you no longer being able to keep up.
Something inside you has evolved, while your outer life has remained the same. The role that used to fit is suddenly a tight fit. The job that once challenged you now just empties you out. The conversations that once seemed important now sound hollow. The goals you’ve worked so hard to achieve feel achieved, but not fulfilled. This is an uncomfortable moment because it doesn’t provide an easy answer. It’s not always a burn-out, a crisis or a dramatic breakdown. Sometimes it is much quieter. An inner knowing that won’t go away. You want to get out, but something is holding you back. And this something is rarely just money, responsibility, the market, the family, the company or the timing. It’s often a question you’d rather not ask: Why don’t I dare to believe in myself?
Not the image of you. Not of your function, your role or your title, but of you. Think about what lies within you when the business card falls away. Think about what you can really do. Of what comes easily to you. What you can talk about for hours without getting tired. The things you don’t look at the clock for. Because that’s often where your real potential lies. But because it feels so normal to you, you don’t consider it valuable. This is one of the strangest tragedies of all: people often overlook the very thing that is closest to them. They look for their talent somewhere far away, in certificates, methods, titles, perhaps new strategies. Sometimes it lies in what they have been doing on the side for years. In the conversations where others suddenly see more clearly. In the ability to recognize patterns. In the way they connect things. In the calm they bring to chaotic spaces. In the energy that arises when they talk about a certain topic. For you, this is nothing special because it comes easily to you. For others, it can be extraordinary.
Many CEOs are familiar with this problem in a different form. They are so trained to define value in terms of key figures, scaling, market size and investor logic that they no longer take their own vitality seriously as a signal. If something is easy, it seems somehow suspicious. If something is fun, it seems almost frivolous. If something comes from genuine interest, it is quickly dismissed as a hobby. But not everything that is easy is small. Sometimes light is exactly the important clue. Not easy in the sense of convenient or superficial, but easy in the sense of: There is energy. There is access. There is an inner yes that does not have to be approved from the outside. A fire and joy!
And yet many men remain in a life that no longer means them, because change not only requires courage, but also a departure from an identity. Who am I when I’m no longer the one who always delivers? Who am I when I am no longer the one who earns the money, bears the responsibility and has everything under control? Who am I when I admit that I have lost my way? These are not small questions. They go deep. Especially for men who have learned to measure their worth in terms of performance. If you work, you are safe. If you are needed, you are important. Those who are successful seem to have no permission to be unhappy. With CEOs, this pressure is often even tougher. They are not just a person, they are a projection screen. Employees expect security. Investors expect confidence. Customers expect direction. The media expect confidence. The environment expects someone at the top to know where things are going. But those who constantly have to give direction sometimes lose touch with their own. Then leadership becomes a mask. You talk about growth, but inside something is shrinking. You talk about the future, but live from old decisions. You talk about culture, but you yourself live in a culture of self-denial. We talk about courage and avoid the one conversation that is long overdue: a conversation with ourselves. And yes, there is responsibility. Leaders cannot simply turn every inner impulse into a corporate strategy. If you have a family, you can’t pretend that decisions only affect you. If you employ staff, you have more than just your own desires. But responsibility must not mean permanently betraying or forgetting yourself. There is a form of sense of duty that looks noble but is actually fear: fear of disappointment, of judgment, of loss, of a new beginning. Perhaps many men stay not because the old is so strong, but because the new would make them beginners again? And being a beginner is difficult if you have long defined yourself by competence. If you’ve been at the top, you don’t want to start at the bottom again. If you were an expert, you don’t want to have to ask questions again. Those who are used to giving answers feel naked when they suddenly have to search. So you’d rather stay in a fake life where you look confident than go into a real one where you’re insecure again. That’s bitter. And human. But at some point, security turns into stagnation. And habit turns into a life that feels increasingly constricted. You notice it in the conversations: Always the same topics, always the same complaints, always the same tiredness. You sit at tables where nobody dreams anymore. It’s all about getting through somehow. Until the weekend, until the next vacation, until the bonus, until the exit, until retirement. The main thing is that nothing breaks open. The truth is that it’s tiring.
But the tables you sit at help decide the direction of your life. What do they talk about? About opportunities or just problems? About ideas or just about security? About development or just about exhaustion? About what could emerge or only about what is annoying? Who is sitting at the table with you? People who think bigger, listen to your aspirations and visions? Or people who immediately extinguish every fire with realism? Realism is important, but in some rooms, realism is just another word for resignation: “It won’t work.” “The market is difficult for that.” “Others have already tried that.” “You don’t start over at your age.” “You’ve got everything.” Such sentences sound reasonable. But they can be poison when they come from people who have long since stopped moving seriously themselves.
For CEOs, the environment is particularly crucial. If you only ever talk to people who depend on your own status, you rarely get the truth. If you only sit in investor rounds, board meetings and strategy circles, you hear a lot about growth, but not necessarily much about vitality. If you only compare yourself with others who also function, exhaustion will eventually become the norm. That’s why people at the top need different tables. Spaces where they don’t have to perform. Conversations where they don’t have to know immediately. People who are not impressed by the title, but are interested in the truth. People who ask: Do you really still want this? Or have you just gotten good at keeping it going?
Many men have long known what they would actually do if they took themselves seriously. They just don’t say it out loud. Or they say it as a subordinate clause: “Actually, I’d like to…” And then they immediately backtrack. “But that’s unrealistic, of course.” “It’s too late for that.” “You’d need capital first.” “I would first have to…” This “first” is dangerous. Of course, change requires preparation. But some preparation is just postponed life. A plan can be a tool. But it can also be a hiding place. An investor can help, but it can also become an excuse. The right time can be important. But if you always wait until the fear disappears, you will never get started.
Courage does not usually come before the beginning. It comes from the beginning. This is uncomfortable because it goes against our idea of control. We want security first, then movement. First clarity and a guarantee, then further steps and risk. Understandable, on the one hand, but life often works differently. Clarity emerges as you go. Confidence grows as you act. A new path is rarely complete as long as you are still stuck on the old one. Even CEOs sometimes forget this. They demand agility from their companies while they themselves remain inwardly immobile. They talk about experiments, but don’t allow themselves any in private. They demand a culture of innovation, but treat their own lives like a risk that must be avoided if possible. Yet they have long known from business that no new model is created by thinking alone. At some point, something has to enter the market. At some point, a prototype is needed. At some point, you have to test instead of just analyzing. Why should it be any different in your own life?
Maybe not everything has to burn immediately. Maybe you don’t have to quit right away, sell everything and get out completely. Maybe it starts smaller: with an honest conversation, with an hour a week for what really energizes you, with an initial offer, a text, a meeting at another table, a decision to stop pretending that everything is fine. The biggest step is often not the big leap. The biggest step is to stop lying to yourself. Because getting stuck rarely starts on the outside. It starts on the inside. The moment you sense that something is no longer right and still pretend it’s just a phase. The moment you make your longing smaller so that it fits into your existing life. The moment you put yourself off until later.
“Later” is a dangerous word. It sounds reasonable, reassuring in a way and simply doesn’t demand anything of you today. But at some point, “later” becomes a life. And at some point you sit there and realize: I didn’t wait until the right time came. I got used to not getting started. That hurts. But it can also wake you up. Maybe the first question isn’t: How do I get out of this? Maybe the first question is: What is really holding me down? Not the version for others, not the neat explanation, not the PowerPoint-compatible answer, but the honest one. Is it really money? Is it really responsibility? Is it really the market? Or is it the fear that you will fail? The fear that you have overestimated yourself? The fear that no one will come? The fear that what’s really important to you won’t work?
These questions are tough. But they are better than living in a fog. Because you can only move what you can honestly name. And maybe, in the end, it’s not about suddenly being fearless. Fearlessness is overrated. Many courageous people are afraid. They just act anyway. They don’t wait for all uncertainty to disappear. They don’t allow fear to permanently determine their direction. This applies to men in upheaval. It applies to CEOs. It applies to anyone who feels that their outer life no longer matches their inner truth.
Courage does not mean giving up everything immediately. Courage means no longer pushing away what you have known for a long time. Courage means giving weight to what you know. Courage means no longer confusing the first step with the whole journey. Maybe you’re still in your old job – yes, fact. Maybe you still run the same company or still have the same role. It may be that the others don’t even know that something inside you has been on the move for a long time. That’s okay. Not every change starts loudly. Some start very quietly. With a sentence that you allow yourself to say for the first time: I don’t want to stay here.
And something can grow from this honesty. Perhaps a new path. Or a different way of walking the old one. Perhaps a conversation that is long overdue. Perhaps a project that starts small and gets bigger. Perhaps a farewell or a beginning. But none of this will happen as long as you treat your longing like a disorder. It is not a disturbance. It is a signal. It doesn’t necessarily say: Throw it all away. It says: finally listen. Because there is something inside you that no longer just wants to function. Something that wants to create. Something that wants to feel energy again. Something that doesn’t want to survive until the next vacation, but wants to take place in your own life now. And perhaps this is precisely the point at which everything is decided. Not whether you immediately have the perfect plan that everyone agrees with. Or whether the timing is ideal. But whether you stop abandoning yourself.
Many men wait for permission: from the family, the market, the investor, the environment. From some sign. CEOs sometimes wait for the right moment after the next quarter, after the next financing round, after the next exit. But no one can give you the deepest permission. Not really. You have to give it to yourself. The permission to take what you feel seriously. Permission to not stay forever who you have become. Permission to start again without despising yourself for not yet knowing how. Maybe this is the real exit: not immediately from the job or the company, let alone from the old life, but from the story that you have to know everything for sure before you can trust yourself. You want out, but something is holding you back. Maybe this something is not the world. Maybe it’s the old version of you that’s afraid of no longer being needed. Maybe it’s the part of you that has learned that security is more important than aliveness. Maybe it’s the image that others have of you and that you don’t want to disappoint. But a picture is not a home. A title is also not a home and neither is a full calendar. A life that only works is not a home. At some point, the question will no longer be whether you can leave, but what it will cost you to stay. And maybe it all starts not with a perfect plan, but with an honest look, with a table where people talk differently, with a small step that doesn’t look spectacular, but is true. With the courage to start before you feel ready.
Because you rarely feel ready at the beginning, you become ready along the way. And sometimes the biggest step is not to change everything at once. Sometimes the biggest step is to finally stop pretending that what is holding you back is stronger than what is calling out to you.
written by Yasmin Floria Kreß – Business Partner of Frank Rechsteiner