Embrace Your Dark Side

Don’t just befriend your shadow—make it work in your favor.

Matt Hunter • July 1, 2025

If you want to achieve something extraordinary, you can’t ignore the hidden forces that drive you, also known as your dark side. Carl Jung called this the ‘shadow’—the unconscious, repressed aspects of ourselves that don’t fit the curated, socially acceptable version of who we’re told to be. Things like shame, guilt, unworthiness, feelings of rejection or abandonment, rage, loneliness, or repressed desires.

Some of our deep cravings—for things like power, success, recognition, and control—can also get pushed down into the shadow realms of our psyche alongside the other parts of ourselves we don’t want to look at or acknowledge. Why? Because these desires speak to things we’re not ‘supposed’ to admit that we want. From a young age, we’re conditioned to downplay these instincts, to soften ourselves, to sand down our rough edges, to avoid making others uncomfortable, to be ‘good.’

But history’s greatest leaders didn’t get where they are through self-denial and playing small. They learned to channel their intensity, rather than hide or apologize for it. They learned to work with and harness so-called “negative” emotions rather than avoiding them. And they learned to own their desires—and transform them into fuel for growth and creation—instead of denying them.

As a founder and CEO coach, I’ve seen over and over that the most relentless, impactful leaders do not suppress their dark side—they harness it. What society labels as ‘negative’—anger, assertiveness, even selfishness—are often the very forces that fuel greatness. Some psychologists refer to these inner drives as ‘dirty’ fuel, but as dirty as it may be, the truth is that it’s the most powerful fuel we have.

Here’s the thing: When we deny any part of ourselves, we clamp down on our personal power. Denying a craving for sex, money, power, fame, or success—the things you’re not ‘supposed’ to want—drains your deeper reservoirs of motivation and creative drive. Our desires are connected to our creativity and our personal power. So when we pretend that we don’t want to make a lot of money, or we don’t want our business to dominate our field, we lose the energy and power that’s contained within those desires. When we stuff away our anger instead of honoring and channeling it into productive action, we also lose the energy and power that’s wrapped up in the emotion of anger.

These desires, emotions, and instincts, when wielded with intention, become sources of resilience, creativity, and assertiveness. These are the forces behind an insane work ethic, unshakable focus, and an almost pathological commitment to greatness. Without a big dark side to lean into, greatness is off the table.

As Walter Isaacson writes in his biography of Elon Musk, the darkness and the light within ourselves can’t be separated:
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​If you want the brilliance, you get the whole package. You can’t have rockets to Mars without the Twitter meltdowns. Strengths and weaknesses are often the same thing, just flipped inside out. You could strip away the chaos, but you’d also strip away the genius. People love to judge—but they don’t want to admit that the same drive that makes someone great also makes them unpredictable, volatile, and even dangerous. It’s important to understand how the strands are woven together, sometimes tightly. It can be hard to remove the dark traits without unraveling the whole cloth. As Shakespeare teaches us, ‘All heroes have flaws, some tragic, some conquered. And those we cast as villains can be complex. Even the best people are molded out of faults.’ Musk jokes, ‘I’ve shot myself in the foot so often, I ought to buy myself some Kevlar boots.’ Would a restrained Musk accomplish as much as a Musk unbound? Is being unfiltered and untethered integral to who he is? Could you get the rockets into orbit or the transition to electric vehicles without accepting all aspects of him, hinged and unhinged? Sometimes great innovators are risk-seeking man-children who resist potty training. They can be reckless, cringeworthy, and sometimes even toxic. They can also be crazy. Crazy enough to think they can change the world.

That being said, it’s important to develop some inner mastery around these qualities so they don’t end up running the show and sabotaging your success. Mastery over your dark side is about knowing when and how to use it. If you figure this out, it will take you to places you never imagined. If it controls you, the opposite will happen. It will lead to destruction. This is why we see so much seemingly unexplainable controversy, impulsive behavior, and self-destruction with great business leaders: it’s a leader’s unchecked dark side that’s taken control of the steering wheel.

Consider, as an example: The shadow trait of being insatiable, or never satisfied. There’s always another level to reach, another challenge to conquer. While this insatiable drive doesn’t always correlate with happiness and inner peace, it’s often what separates elite from average performers. Psychologists wouldn’t consider this healthy. And yet, almost all great leaders are driven by a ‘not enoughness’. Often, it lives underneath a mask of normalcy. Most high performers appear calm, composed, and even pleasant, while beneath the surface, they are relentlessly at work filling an unfillable void.

You can’t eliminate your dark side, and you shouldn’t want to. But you must learn to work with it. Otherwise, it will control you. The best leaders don’t try to suppress their dark traits—they integrate them. They turn their insecurity into a drive to be undeniably great. They channel their aggression into a love of competition. They convert their obsessive nature into mastery. What we want is a positive and productive relationship with our dark side.

Most well-intentioned people work hard to curb or “heal” their dark side. But if you want to win, you must cultivate and unleash your dark side in productive ways.

So, how do we integrate our shadow so that it strengthens rather than derails us?

Awareness & Ownership – The first step is recognizing that the shadow exists. Most people unconsciously reject their dark traits, but suppressing them only makes them more destructive. Be honest with yourself.

Use It as Fuel, Not Fire – Let your dark side drive you forward, but don’t let it burn everything down around you. Keep your impulses in check. Leverage controlled expression. People or circumstances piss you off? No problem, you’re just tossing more logs onto the fire of motivation.

Physical Shadow Work – Activities like martial arts, weightlifting, consensual sex, or intense sports can be great practice for releasing emotional charge and channeling your dark side in a controlled way.

Mindfulness and Meditation – Instead of reacting impulsively to emotions like anger or fear, observe them with curiosity. Build meta-cognition. This will help you in many different areas of work and life.

Push Hard, But Know When to Stop – Drive propels growth and creation, but recklessness destroys. The ability to push yourself to the edge without falling off is what makes someone truly powerful. Don’t let your ambition boil over and burn you (and others) out.

To be clear, not everyone has to be this extreme to build a successful business or career. Many balanced, kind, and thoughtful leaders run great companies without tapping deeply into their dark side. But if you want to win at the highest level—to be the absolute best—you need to embrace every part of who you are, even the parts that make other people uncomfortable. At the highest levels of success, balance is not the goal. Winning is. And winning requires us to fully tap into all of the energy and power inside of us.