Articles from the Career Advisor
 
Too Much Success Can Kill You
 
 
"Success has killed more people than bullets." ~Texas Guinan

As much as I like to help people achieve success, I also like to help them achieve balance in life, because without balance, success can be short-lived. We all have friends who suffer from life-threatening illnesses because they achieved prominence, but forgot to take care of themselves along the way. I believe, too much success can literally kill you. It's not the success itself that's harmful, but the self-denial it takes to get there that's the problem.

High-achieving people often nurture everyone but themselves.

Here are 25 indicators of high stress. Review this list, and note any items that apply to you. If you find yourself checking more than five or six, it may be time to alter your career to reduce your stress level:

  1. When your clothes come back from the dry cleaner, they seem to be shrinking. (If you're a man, the shirt collars don't button.)
  2. You drink more than two or three cups of coffee a day.
  3. You car is littered with McDonalds, KFC, and Taco Bell wrappers.
  4. You feed your pets and plants better than you feed yourself.
  5. Before you phone a friend or business acquaintance, you plan an excuse as to why you can't get together with them soon.
  6. Your "MUST READ" pile is more than a foot tall.
  7. You subscribe to newspapers, journals, or magazines and don't read them.
  8. You go to bed feeling tired, and wake up feeling tired.
  9. Your spouse, significant other, or children are nagging about not having enough time with you. And that makes you angry.
  10. Your e-mail or voicemail is frequently full.
  11. There never seems to be enough time—and you hate waiting in lines.
  12. You put five or six errands into every drive across town.
  13. All your friends are work-related friends. All your social gatherings are work-related.
  14. You have physical symptoms you can't explain, or a nagging health problem that won't go away.
  15. You guide every moment with checklists, and feel guilty if you're not doing something "productive." You don't do things without a "purpose."
  16. You haven't had a two-week vacation in more than five years.
  17. Exercise is last on your list of "to dos." As a result, it's often forgotten.
  18. You can't understand why anyone would want to drink a beverage like water.
  19. You rush across town to do Tai Chi, then rush back.
  20. You forget things, or lose your keys or day planner. Important details fall through the cracks.
  21. You spend weekends organizing your stuff.
  22. TV Guide is the last good book you've read.
  23. You're a hotheaded in traffic.
  24. You take over-the-counter drugs to control headaches, rather than eliminating the cause of the headaches.
  25. You have business and home phones, fax, pager, and cell phone numbers, and more than two e-mail addresses. Perhaps you have a blog, LinkedIn account, website, facebook page, or Twitter account—or all of the above.
 
  This list could go on endlessly—and one person's stress is another person's happiness.

Our culture encourages us to "be more," and to "do more." There's nothing wrong with high achievement, the problem with achievement is when it takes over our lives—when we become our careers. That is, when our career becomes our whole identity.

America's high-speed FedEx, Twitter, needed-it-yesterday culture rewards achievement, shopping, and having and doing more; and it disdains being quiet, taking time for oneself, slowing down, and looking after oneself. It is a battle with the culture to achieve balance and piece of mind.

The reason I'm such an expert at discussing stress, is that I've displayed most of the above-mentioned symptoms myself, sometimes all of them at once. Mid-career, I've made some gains in balancing my life, but I'm still working at it. It's a lifetime process.

Here are four books I've found extremely useful in slowing myself down and putting my own career and life into better perspective.

 
 
  1. Care of the Soul: A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life, by Thomas Moore, HarperPerennial  
 
  2. New Passages: Mapping Your Life Across Time, by Gail Sheehy, Random House  
 
  3. Living the Simple Life: A Guide to Scaling Down and Enjoying More, by Elaine St. James, Hyperion Books  
 
  4. The Artist's Way: A Course in Discovering and Recovering Your Creative Self, by Julia Cameron with Mark Bryan, Tarcher/Putnam  
 
  I've found massage therapy, or "body work," to be beneficial in combating a high-success lifestyle. When was the last time you had a good massage?

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"More men are killed by overwork than the importance of the world justifies." ~Rudyard Kipling, The Phantom Rickshaw, 1888
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