Last time, we named it: the Success Trap. That quiet dissonance between what you've built and what you actually feel.

Today: why it's not your fault.

Let's get something out of the way.

That feeling you have? The one where you've done everything right and something still feels off?

You're not crazy. You're not ungrateful. You're not broken.

You're responding exactly the way a human responds when they've been following someone else's map for a very long time.

Here's what's actually happening.

Your brain is doing its job.

We're wired to chase achievement. Dopamine hits when we win. Our ancestors needed that loop to survive: pursue, succeed, repeat. The ones who didn't chase didn't make it.

But the system doesn't know the difference between your goal and a goal someone handed you. It just rewards the win. Title? Dopamine. Promotion? Dopamine. Closing the deal, hitting the number, getting the nod from the board? Dopamine, dopamine, dopamine.

So you keep climbing. And the hits keep coming. And somewhere along the way, you stop asking whether you actually wanted to be on this mountain.

You're not weak for getting caught in this loop. You're human.

Society handed you the map.

From the beginning, the path was drawn for you. Good grades. Good college. Good job. Good title. Keep going.

The message was clear: success looks like this. Deviate and you're falling behind. Question it and you're ungrateful. Stop climbing and you're giving up.

So you kept climbing. Because the trail was well-marked and everyone else was on it and the view from the top was supposed to make it all worth it.

Nobody told you there were other mountains. Nobody told you the map might not be your own.

Your family wrote the first draft.

Before society got to you, your family had already started the story.

Maybe it was explicit: "You're going to be a doctor, a lawyer, a success." Maybe it was unspoken: watching what got praised, what got attention, what made them proud.

You absorbed it. What success meant. What mattered. What a good life looked like.

And you carried it forward. Sometimes without ever asking whether it was yours.

This isn't about blame. Most of it was handed down with love, or at least with good intentions. But inherited expectations don't come with expiration dates. They just keep running in the background until you notice them.

Here's the thing nobody tells you:

Feeling the dissonance isn't the problem. Not feeling it would be.

If you'd spent decades climbing a mountain that was never yours and felt nothing? That would be concerning.

The fact that something in you is saying wait, is this right? That's not a malfunction. That's your deepest self trying to get your attention.

The dissonance is the signal.
This week, notice when you say "I should." Then ask: whose voice is that? Yours, or one you inherited?

Up next: The five patterns of the Success Trap. And which one might have you.