In my latest book, The Practice of Groundedness, I traced this general sense of dis-ease to a concept I called heroic individualism: an ongoing game of oneupmanship against yourself and others where the goalpost is always ten-yards down the field. Heroic individualism is a vicious spiral of go, go, go; more, more, more; nothing is ever enough. It is striving unhinged, the result of which is a frantic and frenetic lifestyle overflowing with busyness, restlessness, loneliness, and, eventually, emptiness. I argued that the root problem of heroic individualism is that we fail to properly ground ourselves with a solid foundation of habits and practices in our lives.
Since the book came out, something I hear frequently from readers is how helpful it has been to have not only ideas for the solution but also a name for the problem. Once you give something a name, it loses some of its power of you. You can identify when you are trapped in it. You can wrestle with it. You can discuss it with others.