The Missed Measure Of Success
How Lyrics From (Almost) 50 Years Ago Are More Important Today Than Ever Before
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The Missed Measure Of Success
How Lyrics From (Almost) 50 Years Ago Are More Important Today Than Ever Before
Success...
It is a Word that We are Obsessed With...
A State of Being that We Sprint Towards at Nearly Any Cost.
We as a Society are So Bedeviled by this Preposterously Tiny Word...
That We Destroy Ourselves in the Process of Attaining It.
Burnout.
This is the Psychophysiological State of Being where Our Bodies, Literally, Tear Themselves Apart Due to Extreme and Chronic Dis-Stress.
It is where Over 80% of the Workforce Currently Exists...
And The Stats Continue to Get Worse.
And it is Not Harmless...
Extreme Burnout is Deadly...
Literally.
Having Even been the Recorded Cause of Death for Anna Sebastian Perayil...
A 26 Year Old Girl in India.
This Does Not even include the Numerous Incidents of Mental Health Problems Caused by Burnout which Ended in Death...
Such as the Suicide of Matsuri Takahashi...
A 24 Year Old Girl in Japan who had been Recorded Working "Over" 100 Hours of "Overtime" in a Month.
These are Not Isolated Incidents.
The Consequences of Burnout are Serious.
Not to Mention the Fact that We, as Humans, simply Become Ineffective at Everything in Burnout.
Our Productivity Potential Drops to 5%...
And in Many Cases Due to Increases in Making Mistakes, Ineffective Plans, and a Lack of Resources...
We Often Create Negative Productivity...
Literally Moving Backwards from the Goal.
We are So Desperate to Obtain this Amorphous "Success"...
That We Eradicate Our Chances of Attaining It.
What is it that We are Missing?
The Reality is that there is a Missed Measure of Success...
Which is What Drives Us into Burnout...
And Causes Our Downfall.
What is it?
Time.
We are So Desperate to Get Success...
That We Fail to Understand that Success is Not a Single Event.
Success is Found Over Time...
Over a Career.
There are Many Individuals who have Achieved Some "Success" at an Early Part of their Life...
Only to Crash...
Crumble...
And Disappear Due to the Desperation to Get that Success.
Many Individuals who were Once Hailed as Geniuses...
Innovators...
Brilliant...
Have Since Become Terrible Villains and Done Truly Harmful and Disastrous Things Later in their Lives.
In their Pursuits of Success...
They have Destroyed Themselves and their Legacies.
As I Write this on this Sunday Evening...
A Day that has been Very Calm and Restful for Me...
Taking Time to Be with My Spouse and Relax...
I am Reminded of One of Our Favorite Songs.
Vienna by Billy Joel.
The Beginning of the Song Goes like this...
"Slow down, you crazy child
You're so ambitious for a juvenile
But then if you're so smart
Tell me why are you still so afraid? Mm
Where's the fire, what's the hurry about?
You'd better cool it off before you burn it out
You've got so much to do
And only so many hours in a day, hey"
Nearly Fifty Years Ago this Song Released...
Warning Us about the Reality...
Our Ambitions for Success...
Our Fear of Losing the Opportunity for that Success...
The Speed at Which We Move and the Real Limits of Time that Exists...
All of these Cause Us to Burn Out our Chances of Success.
Then, More is Revealed in the Next Verse...
"Slow down, you're doin' fine
You can't be everything you wanna be before your time
Although it's so romantic on the borderline tonight, tonight
Too bad, but it's the life you lead
You're so ahead of yourself, that you forgot what you need
Though you can see when you're wrong
You know you can't always see when you're right
You're right"
Joel, in this Verse, Lays Out a Bit of Reality.
Slow Down...
You're Doing Fine.
We are So Obsessed with this Idea of Success...
But on such an Insane Timeline...
That We Fail to Recognize that We are Often Further than We Realize...
And that We Do Not Need to Kill Ourselves to Get to some "Endline" Faster.
You're Doing Fine.
There is a Time for Everything.
Success.
Failures.
Expertise.
Learning.
Knowledge.
Wisdom.
All of these Have a Time and a Place, and if We are Too Hasty in Trying to Get to an Imagined "End"...
Then We Fail to Obtain these at the Right Times.
We Get So Far "Ahead" of Where We Actually Are...
Trying to Become Things that We are Not "Yet"...
That We Forget the Things that We Need.
The Need to Be Human.
We Lose Sight of What it Means to be Human...
We "Feed" Ourselves with Junk Poison...
We "Live" in Office Prisons...
Filled with Synthetic Light and Air...
We are "Surrounded" by Others...
But have No Real Connections with Any of those People.
We are "Entertained" by Various Things...
But Not Actually Living.
We are So Consumed with Pushing Toward Success...
That We Fail To Be Alive.
And in this Constant Push for Success...
All We See are Our Failures.
We Know Every Single Wrong Move We Make.
We Beat Ourselves Up...
Subconsciously Expecting Ourselves to be Perfect...
And Constantly Missing the Mark...
Because at the End of the Day...
We are Human.
Plain and Simple.
But When We are So Laser Focused on All of the Mistakes We Make...
We Create a Vicious Cycle.
We Find What We Look For...
So When We Look for Mistakes...
We Constantly Find Mistakes...
And Make Mistakes.
We are So Focused on the Mistakes that Make Us Feel Further Away from the Success that We are So Desperate For...
That We Miss Opportunities to Grow...
To Learn...
And to Expand Our Abilities...
Because We are Far Too Focused on Our Mistakes.
Every Single Way We Look At It...
We Destroy Ourselves...
Because We Continue to Fail to Realize that the Greatest of Successes...
Take Time.
They are Developed Over Careers.
Over Lifetimes.
True Success is Not a Singular Event...
But a Long Series of Events that Occur Over a Life Well Lived.
It is True that We Do Not Want to Waste Our Lives...
You're Right...
But We Must Also Recognize We Are Human...
We Have Other Needs in Our Lives...
Life is More than Whatever Ambiguous Measure of Success We Chase.
I will Leave You with a Few More Lines from Billy Joel...
"Slow down, you crazy child
And take the phone off the hook and disappear for a while
It's all right, you can afford to lose a day or two, ooh
When will you realize Vienna waits for you?"
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One of the Key Things to Understand…
We Need to Recover Well.
Now, there are Many Things that People talk about for Recovery…
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