Why High-Achieving Men Feel Invisible No Matter What They Do
You can do everything right and still feel unseen. The problem isn't your effort. It's where you think your control ends.
The Truth of It: Being seen was never in your control. The harder you reach for it, the more it pulls away. What you can control ends at the surface of your skin. Everything that matters begins underneath it.
Every man wants to be seen. None of them can control it.
There is human desire for recognition and validation. It drives us to achieve; sometimes that drive is toward what we want for ourselves, many times it drives us toward what we were told we should want and do.
For high-achievers who commit heavily to actions and outcomes, that drive can come with the cost of shaken confidence, questioned capacity, and a fluctuating sense of worth when the actions we undertake do not deliver the outcomes we desire.
You are like the tree in the woods that falls without a witness. Without an ear to receive its thud, it does not make a sound.
Your actions, even when conducted with full transparency and visibility, may not be seen by the intended witnesses.
That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do them. It means you need to look at your reason for wanting validation from outside of yourself.
What can a man actually control?
You can control your thoughts, your attitude, your emotions, and your physical actions.
That’s it.
You cannot control how anyone else reacts/responds/senses those things.
A few years ago, I went skydiving for my birthday. It was a rite-of-passage moment I’d wanted to do for 30, but it was deferred until I hit 57.
Looking out at the Sonoma County landscape from 12,000ft was sobering and terrifying. I have lived with a fear of heights for most of my life.
When the instructor launched us out of the plane, I began SCREAMING my head off in sheer, unbridled terror. It went on for a good 8-10 seconds, as I look back.
There was a moment that came during that terror, where I heard a calm voice in my head say, “That parachute is either going to open, and you’ll have nothing to worry about, or it won’t, AND YOU’LL HAVE NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT.”
That’s the moment I started giggling with joy. I realized two profound truths in that moment:
1. My real fear was never heights. It was being out of control. With nothing to grab onto, no way to stop or adjust my fall, I had to accept where I was and be OK with it.
2. Life is like that jump. All that is in my control is how I think about it. Everything else is secondary, and originates from that choice of perception.
When you jump into action, when you take a leap of courage to present your ideas, you enter into that same type of free-fall. The environment is out of your control. How you show up in it is not.
Why can't you make them understand?
Every single person on this planet grew up conditioned by perceptual filters. Built from family structures and rules, to regional, national, cultural, religious, and political beliefs that were imposed as ‘norms,’ which were then either reinforced or questioned through their life experiences, everyone filters their senses. You do it too.
If you talk too fast, someone may shut you out; talk too slow, someone else will get bored and tune out. Show what you’re capable of doing, or share it confidently? Well then you’re either an ego-centric ass or the next new promotion to the C-Suite.
People tend to be stuck in these beliefs; running their lives mostly unconsciously, these ideas shut out anything that does not correspond with and validate them.
You can’t ‘make’ anyone do anything. Nor can anyone make you do anything. Every individual is sovereign.
What’s in your control is showing up and taking action.
Do the work for the joy of the work, not for recognition of it.
Otherwise, you’re working for validation and if it doesn’t arrive, or arrives negatively, then the work feels worthless.
Why doesn't being seen work the way men think it should?
Because we’re attached to our perspectives too. We want to be seen in the way we want to be seen. That could be anything from confident and strong to caring and nurturing, or anywhere in between.
We want how we are seen to validate our story and beliefs about ourselves.
Interestingly, the more we attach to that singular outcome, the more we push it away.
We get upset, try harder, repel it faster, and get discouraged; wondering “Why me? Why is it so difficult to get recognized for my gifts?”
From that mindset, we begin broadcasting that sense of frustration and underlying sense of weakness, which is what everyone around us picks up on…and we reinforce the exact opposite of our intended goal.
Your energy, your attitude, will precede you into any room or conversation. Those already in the room will also have their attitudes present.
On a basic level the Theory of Evolution observes that the most flexible element of any system will be the one that thrives.
Your job is to be flexible in your beliefs, attitudes, and actions to create connection, rather than being attached to external outcomes that are beyond your control. Rigidity to an expected outcome will fail more often than not.
I find it interesting that the man who realizes he has no control over the world is the one who is most in control.
What you can control ends at the surface of your skin.
You can push a button. That does not mean it will work.
You can press the accelerator on your car. That does not mean it will go faster.
You can ask someone, maybe even tell them, to do something. That does not mean they will.
If you try too hard to force their compliance, then you’re dancing the very thin line of manipulation.
As I realized in my skydiving experience, what is in my control ends at the surface of my skin. Just as it does with yours.
When you accept that reality, life becomes much easier. As soon as you stop thinking you can affect others, ‘make’ them do something, ‘get them to see it your way,’ you’ll discover a sense of peace that is almost uncomfortable at first.
What’s left when the outcome isn't yours?
When you let go of attachment to the outcome, what’s left is confidence that you can handle what is in your control. Frustration is replaced by calm.
What’s left is a clear sense of what was always, and only, in your control: your mindset.
You choose it every day. Until this moment, you may have been choosing it unconsciously, allowing a sense of victimhood to run your life, expecting outcomes that were never yours to affect.
Let this article be your reminder: You are in control of you. That is not weakness, that is supreme power.
As others dilute their energy trying to do what you used to do, you can now selectively choose where and how to focus and apply your consciousness.
What happens to men who stop trying to control the response?
They win. They win by winning the only game that there is to be played: the Game of Self.
They show up as who they really are, authentically, owning their voice, owning their achievements with confidence, allowing the room to see them, rather than begging it to.
They stand as the man who is already complete within himself, who does not require outside permission to shine, who does not require external validation of his existence.
He knows he exists, because he creates his life intentionally every day.
The men who stop reaching to be seen are the ones who finally are.
You already have everything you need, it is within you and you’ll discover it when you turn your attention away from external validation.
When you stop performing for the room and allow yourself to be who you are, you’ll get seen as who you truly are, instead of as your identity as the mask you’ve been wearing to gain approval.
You were never meant to be two people. When you embrace that, the validation from the room stops being something you need.
That’s what the Undivided Man is all about.
You. Wholly You.
