The Two-Part Recipe Every Fulfilled CEO I Know Is Living
The happiest people I know are helping others through something they once needed help with themselves.
Not in a dramatic, martyr-y, “look how much I’ve overcome” way.
In a much simpler way.
They’ve found the place where their gifts, their story, and someone else’s needs all meet.
I’ve spent a lot of time sitting across from people who are trying to figure out what “success” actually means. Founders. CEOs. Entrepreneurs. Executives. People who have built, sold, scaled, earned, proved, won, and checked all the boxes.
And what I keep seeing is this:
The most fulfilled people are not just successful.
They are useful.
Not useful in the “I abandon myself and over-function for everyone” way. That’s not purpose. That’s usually fear wearing a helpful little outfit.
I mean useful in the specific way they were built to be useful.
When I meet someone who seems genuinely happy and fulfilled, two things are almost always present:
1. They help people in the way they once needed to be helped.This is the part most people miss. The thing you are here to offer is often connected to the thing you had to wrestle with yourself. The pain. The confusion. The pattern. The question. The thing that took you years to understand. At some point, what you lived through stops being only your burden and starts becoming a bridge for someone else.
2. They do it using their unique skills and talents.Gay Hendricks calls it your zone of genius. Patrick Lencioni has his own language for it. Plenty of smart people have named this in different ways. I don’t care what you call it. The point is this: you have certain qualities that feel deeply natural to you. Ways of seeing, creating, challenging, connecting, solving, sensing, building, or naming truth that don’t feel like effort in the same way other things do.
That combination is powerful.
Your story gives the work meaning.
Your genius gives it shape.
For me, coaching executives, and helping them wake up to their unconscious fear, is deeply fulfilling because fear ran my life for years. It cost me joy. It cost me presence. It cost me freedom. So when I’m with someone who is starting to see how fear is quietly driving their choices, I’m not just doing a job.
I’m meeting them in a place I know.
That matters.
And here’s the part I love most: this recipe doesn’t only apply to massive career changes.
It works in ten minutes.
When I’m sad, stuck, tight, or trapped in scarcity, the fastest way out is usually not more thinking. It’s helping someone from the truest part of me.
Not because I’m trying to be noble.
Because it wakes me back up.
Maybe success is not getting somewhere.
Maybe it’s becoming useful in the way only you can.
My Key Takeaways from this episode:
1. Helping someone the way you've needed to be helped is one of the most fulfilling things a human can do.
Your adversity isn't just baggage. It's a credential. The hardest things you've moved through become the exact thing you're uniquely positioned to help someone else move through. Look at where you've struggled most. That's a clue.
2. There's a difference between being good at something and being energized by it.
Zone of excellence will get you praised, paid, and promoted. It will also quietly drain you. Zone of genius is what others find hard but feels intuitive to you, and the test is energy. Excellence depletes. Genius energizes.
3. The combination is the magic.
Helping the way you've needed to be helped, using the gifts that come most naturally to you. That's the recipe. Most people are doing one or the other. Very few are doing both intentionally.
4. Scarcity gets cured by giving, not by hustling.
When I lost most of my book of business in three weeks, my instinct was to grind. What actually shifted me was hopping on a call with a client I still had and just helping the way I know how to help. I walked away grounded and worthy. That's the practice. When you don't think you have enough - give what you do have.
5. When you show up, the world shows up.
The more I trust this - that putting my energy forward in a meaningful way actually meets me halfway - the more I see it play out. Phones ring. Opportunities surface. I can't fully explain it. I just know it's real, and it's available to anyone willing to test it.
Whether you're a founder, a CEO, an operator, a parent, or just a human trying to live a life that means something - the recipe holds. Help in the way you've needed to be helped. Use the gifts that come most naturally to you. Watch what happens.
Resources Mentioned:
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If you have a topic or guest you'd love to see on Fearful Giants, reach out to me at clay@15sixty.com
Clay
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