Hi ,

Last week we sat with the gap, the strange ache of a life that looks right but feels wrong. This week I want to talk about the emotion that almost always rides shotgun with that ache, and that almost nobody admits to out loud.

Shame.

Not the loud, obvious kind. The quiet kind. The kind that whispers, “you have no right to feel this way.”

The problem: feeling ungrateful for a life you worked hard to build.

Here’s the cruel twist of the gap. The more successful your life looks from the outside, the harder it becomes to admit, it doesn’t feel right on the inside. Because the moment you do, a voice pipes up: “Who are you to want more? People would kill for what you have. You’re being ungrateful. Spoiled. Selfish, even.” So, you swallow it. You count your blessings, you remind yourself how lucky you are, and you carry on performing contentment you don’t feel. The wanting goes underground — but it doesn’t go away. It just curdles into a low, persistent self-judgement that sits underneath everything.

This is the thing I most want you to hear today: the shame is the lock on the door. As long as you believe that wanting more makes you a bad person, you’ll never let yourself explore what the wanting is actually pointing at. The shame doesn’t just hurt. It keeps you stuck. Leading shame researcher Brené Brown writes: “If you put shame in a Petri dish, it needs three things to grow into every corner of our lives: secrecy, silence and judgement. But if you put that same amount of shame in a Petri dish and you douse it with empathy, you’ve created a hostile environment. The minute you know you’re not alone and that your experience is human, shame just doesn’t survive.” In other words, shame hates being put into words. If we speak shame, it begins to wither.

A thought leader worth hearing on this

“The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.”

That was Jung, where we left off in the last letter. But Jung had a student who took that idea into the body and the messy emotional truth of it, and her words cut closer to the bone here. Jungian analyst Marion Woodman when reflecting on this and Joseph Campbell’s seminal work ‘The Hero’s Journey’ wrote:

“The hero’s journey is to surrender the life we planned in order to live the life that is waiting for us.”

The insight: Notice the word ‘surrender.’ Not upgrade. Not optimise. Surrender. Woodman understood that reinvention requires grieving something. Either the life you planned, the self you were supposed to become, or the story you told everyone (and yourself). And you cannot grieve what you won’t admit you’ve outgrown. shame keeps you defending the planned life long after it has stopped fitting, because admitting it doesn’t fit feels like admitting you were wrong to want it in the first place.

The implication: Wanting more is not ingratitude. It’s the early, awkward language of the life that’s waiting for you. The shame you feel isn’t a sign you’re a bad person, it’s a sign you’re standing at the threshold of becoming, with one hand still gripping the doorframe of who you used to be. You’re allowed to have built something and to have outgrown it. Both can be true. Gratitude and longing are not enemies.

How this actually gets solved — in the real world.

The way through shame is never to argue with it. You can’t logic your way out of “you’re ungrateful”. The more you debate it, the louder it gets. The way through is to re-label the wanting.

Here’s the shift. Stop hearing the restlessness as “I’m not grateful enough for what I have.” Start hearing it as “some core part of me is not being expressed right now.” That’s it. That single reframe turns a moral failing into a piece of useful information. The wanting stops being evidence that you’re a bad person and becomes a clue about what makes you come alive.

And the clue is specific. The restlessness isn’t random, it indeed has a shape. It’s a particular impulse, starved of oxygen, trying to get your attention. Name the impulse, and the shame loses its grip, because you’re no longer a spoiled person who can’t be satisfied. You’re a person whose core driver isn’t being fed. That’s not a character flaw. That’s a design problem, and as many anthropologists will argue, design problems can be solved.

Tie the Bow: What each Sparketype’s “wanting more” is really saying.

When the shame lifts and you listen to the wanting properly, here’s what it’s most likely pointing at, depending on your Sparketype®

• The Maven: “I want more” usually means I’ve stopped learning. The hunger is for new depth, not a new life.
• The Maker: It means I haven’t made anything that’s truly mine in too long. The wanting is creative starvation.
• The Scientist: It means there’s no real problem in front of me anymore. Solved, stable, and bored is its own quiet ache.
• The Essentialist: It means I’m bringing order to things that don’t matter to me. The wanting is for order in service of meaning.
• The Performer: It means I’ve gone too long without a moment to bring alive. The flatness comes from missing the stage.
• The Sage: It means I’m taking everything in and illuminating nothing. The wanting is to share, to teach, to turn the lights on for someone.
• The Warrior: It means there’s no mission worth rallying people around. The restlessness is leadership with nowhere to point.
• The Advisor: It means I’ve lost contact with the people I’m meant to walk beside. The emptiness is relational.
• The Advocate: It means there’s a cause I’m not fighting for. The simmering is conviction without an outlet.
• The Nurturer: It means I’m pouring out and nothing is pouring back in — and sometimes, that I’ve forgotten to include myself in the care.

Same shame, ten different messages underneath it. Your Sparketype® tells you what your “wanting more” has been trying to say all along.

Something to sit with this week

The next time the wanting shows up and the shame right behind it, try not to scold it back into its box. Instead, ask it one question: what part of me are you speaking for? You don’t have to act. Just listen differently.

One more thing, for the coaches, leaders, and people-practitioners reading.

If you work with high performers, you’ve met this shame even when your client can’t name it. The successful executive who feels guilty admitting they’re miserable. The leader quietly grieving a version of themselves they never got to be. Helping someone re-label their wanting, from “I’m ungrateful” to “something in me needs expression”, is one of the most freeing moments you can facilitate.

We’re opening our next CSA Cohort in September and the application is now live. If helping others close that gap is the work you feel called to do, we’d love to have you join us. Learn more and apply.​

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Becoming who you truly are is the privilege of a lifetime. Helping others do the same might be the most meaningful work there is. If you’d like to be first to hear about upcoming opportunities or as applications for trainings open, just reply and let me know. I read everything. You’re allowed to want more. It might be the truest thing about you.

Talk soon,

Mark & The Sparked Team

P.S. – For more daily ‘sparks’ please follow along on Instagram @sparked.next​

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