GETTING A
SUCCESS CHANGE
How to Be Happy in a World Gone Mad
Ed Brodow
GETTING A SUCCESS CHANGE
Copyright © 2012 Ed Brodow
All rights reserved.
Smashwords Edition
No part of this work may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in whole or in part by any means without the express written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
Published by Ed Brodow
www.successchange.com
Getting A Success Change was originally published by HarperCollins Publishers as Beating the Success Trap: Negotiating for the Life You Really Want and the Rewards You Deserve
CONTENTS
Preface to the 2012 edition
Introduction
Prologue: A Modern Success Fable
Part One: Brainwashed
Chapter 1: If I’m So Successful, Why Am I Taking Prozac?
Chapter 2: The Images of Success
Chapter 3: Lessons from an Unseduced Maverick
Chapter 4: Discovering the You In You
Chapter 5: Tapping Into Your Gut
Part Two: Abused
Chapter 6: Abuse Will Not Make You Successful
Chapter 7: A New Perspective On Failure
Chapter 8: The Affection-Based Support System
Part Three: Victimized
Chapter 9: The Victim Mentality
Chapter 10: The Confidence Mystique
Part Four: Free At Last
Chapter 11: Your Money or Your Lifestyle?
Chapter 12: Four Steps to Personal Fulfillment
Chapter 13: The Courage to Succeed
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Preface to the 2012 Edition
My favorite expression is, “Life is short so don’t forget to smell the flowers.” Sadly, most of the people I meet are running in circles so obsessively that they have forgotten how to smell the wonderful things that are within their grasp. In my view, these people are not alive.
This observation has greater relevance today than when I began work on this book more than ten years ago. Originally published as Beating the Success Trap, it was ahead of its time. We were in the middle of an economic boom and everyone was scrambling for a piece of the pie. Today the boom is over. Old-fashioned success is harder to come by and people are more receptive to the ideas in this book.
My thesis is that you have two choices. You can buy into the old definition of success and participate in a living death, or you can create your own definition of success. People think nothing of getting a nose job, a tummy tuck, or even a sex change. Why not a success change?
And how do you get a success change, you might ask? Well, get some popcorn, take off your shoes, and fasten your seat belts because you are about to find out!
Ed Brodow
Monterey, Calif.
Introduction
While on a recent business trip to New York, I was treated to a sumptuous dinner at the Plaza Hotel by my old college buddy, Alfie Hunt, who had started his own electronics company. After dinner, my generous host and I went for a walk to enjoy the beautiful fall weather. As we stopped outside his posh Fifth Avenue penthouse, Alfie looked at me wistfully.
“You know,” he said, “it would be nice to be really rich.”
I was startled. Alfie was worth at least thirty million dollars at the time of this conversation. Call me crazy, but that seemed like plenty of pocket change to me, so I wasn’t sure how to respond.
“What do you mean, Alfie,” I inquired tentatively, “when you say really rich?”
“Oh, you know,” he replied, “like Warren Buffett.”
Warren Buffett is a multibillionaire, one of the five richest people on the planet. Alfie Hunt is a multimillionaire, but that isn’t enough for him and never will be. No matter how much he achieves, Alfie won’t feel successful. Inside, Alfie is dead.
Alfie is not an isolated case. Millions of people have struggled and sacrificed for the happiness that is supposed to come with success, only to meet with disappointment. Too often they find themselves well into their careers with their creativity stifled and their dreams unfulfilled. Outwardly, they may look like Alfie — prosperous, seemingly content, on top of the world. Inwardly, however, they feel empty and unsatisfied. As the Wall Street Journal observes, “A growing number of the disenchanted are asking: ‘Is this all there is to life?’” This phenomenon is not limited to those with graying hair. Many younger people feel they “bought into a dream, but the dream didn’t give them what they thought,” says the Reverend Greg Cootsona of the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York. Even movie stars are not exempt. “I thought that when I became a success, something would change,” confessed Jamie Lee Curtis on a TV talk show. The star of A Fish Called Wanda and True Lies added, “Well, I made it, but nothing changed!” So if conventional success is not the Holy Grail, then what is?
In this culture, success means acquiring riches, fame, status, and power: money to buy, or have the option to buy, the most luxurious material trappings; mention on the evening news; recognition in one’s chosen field; the ability to exercise power over others. These symbols of success are supposed to guarantee happiness and contentment. Instead, our narrow definition of success has trapped millions of unsuspecting people in lifestyles that do not satisfy their real needs and cravings. They have acquired the symbols of success, but rather than feeling successful they are burnt out and disillusioned. “The trouble with the rat race,” observed Lily Tomlin, “is that even if you win, you’re still a rat.” The solution is to quit the race and focus your energy on leading the kind of lifestyle that reflects your needs. It is the quality of your life, not the size of your bank account, that ought to determine whether or not you have made it.
Each of us deserves the privilege of creating our own definition of success that is based on our personal values, not on those we have been brainwashed to accept. This book affirms that it is possible for you to be a success on your own terms, not only functioning as a part of society but actually making a greater contribution to that society as a direct result of having paid attention to your individual needs. Success and individuality are connected. Termites don’t succeed, people do. You will feel successful in direct proportion to how much your life is in alignment with who you really are. To be truly successful is to be able to say, “I spend my time doing what is meaningful to me.”
The proof that this is not just an American issue but a universal one is found in the reactions to Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, which has fascinated people all over the world since Miller wrote it back in the 1940s. Willy Loman, the play’s tragic hero, spends his entire life trying to measure up to society’s concept of success, only to lose himself in the process. Why are international audiences — whether in Madrid, Oslo, Rome, Athens, or Tokyo — so transfixed by this quintessential American story? The answer is that there are no national boundaries on the issue of personal fulfillment in the modern postindustrial world.
Instead of offering relief, most books on success aggravate the problem by perpetuating society’s myopic definition of what it means to “make it.” Like Willy Loman, we have been brainwashed to accept the party line: fame, fortune, status, power. For some reason, I’ve never been able to do it. I made a decision early in my life that unless I risked doing things my own way, I would never be content. I have refused to settle for less. If something wasn’t working in my life, I changed it. I have transitioned through four careers: sales executive, actor, negotiation expert/motivational speaker, and author. Each of the lifestyle choices that are discussed and encouraged throughout this book have been informed by my own experience and shared with thousands of business executives in my Negotiation Boot Camp® and Success Seminars.
Don’t get me wrong — this life of risk-taking and change hasn’t been easy. For years, my friends and family thought I had lost my marbles. I admit there have been times when even I thought so. But in the end, I have no regrets. My life today is what I have carved out for myself in response to my needs and temperament and worldview. Unlike Alfie, my success is not measured in terms of money, fame, status, or power. I am a success on my own terms, which means this: My day-to-day existence brings me joy and satisfaction. I look forward to getting up in the morning. As the philosopher Joseph Campbell would have put it, I am “following my bliss.”
It is with infinite sadness that I see millions of people around me for whom getting out of bed every day is pure drudgery. My purpose in writing this book is to bring the real causes of their disenchantment and deep suffering out into the open and, in so doing, to encourage readers to follow their own paths to a meaningful lifestyle. The tragic events of September 11, 2001, serve to underscore that life is a gift. This is not a dress rehearsal; you are somewhere between the first and third acts of the real play, which is entitled “Your Life.” To those who were unable to finish the play, the rest of us have a responsibility to live our lives to the fullest. Are you doing that? Do any of the following statements grab you?
• I have all this stuff, but deep down I don’t feel successful.
• Other people seem to have more satisfying, inspiring, and adventurous lives.
• I am in a continual state of wanting and not getting.
• The world appears overwhelming and powerful while I feel small and clueless.
• My life is devoid of joy.
• My life is boring.
• If only I had _____, I’d feel successful.
If any of these statements pushes your buttons, don’t despair. The good news is that in today’s world, where there is more personal freedom than at any time in history, everything you have dreamed about and hoped for is possible. This book will help you to understand why it is so difficult to live the life you really want, and it will offer concrete prescriptive advice on how to overcome the obstacles.
Part One describes how we are caught up in the success trap; it will help you to escape the trap by creating your own personal definition of success; and it will show you how to tap into your intuitive knowledge about what your life ought to be. Part Two exposes the abuse-based thinking that forms an invisible barrier between you and the life you would love to be living; it also prescribes a formula for replacing the abuse in your life with an affection-based support system. Part Three explains how we often give away our power to succeed, and offers practical techniques for reclaiming that power. Part Four will show you how to visualize the lifestyle you’ve always wanted; how to create and implement a success change; and, finally, where to find the courage to act on your convictions.
The new paradigm for success offered in these pages has changed my life, and I hope it will change yours. I believe that if we view success as an individual decision, not as a conditioned reflex, we will live longer, healthier, more fulfilling lives. After reading this book, you may be lucky enough to conclude that the life you are already living is the life you really want to live. If, on the other hand, you are one of the millions who are not so fortunate, you will be armed with the tools to make the necessary changes.
Which brings me to one final point. I believe we must take responsibility for our behavior and the outcome of our lives. Unfortunately, in this culture we seem to be moving away from the acceptance of individual responsibility and moving toward placing the blame on external causes. One example is the idea that personal issues can be resolved by a visit to the drugstore. Instead of dealing with depression — the new epidemic of our affluent age — by attempting to understand and deal with its origins, we are encouraged by the medical establishment and the drug companies to take Prozac, Xanax, Zoloft, Paxil, and their successors. These drugs may be appropriate for some people, but for others they treat the symptoms instead of addressing the underlying causes. By swallowing a pill, we avoid dealing with the real question: If I feel so discontented with my life, why don’t I do something about it?
Ed Brodow
Monterey, California
PROLOGUE
A MODERN SUCCESS FABLE
The following is a story that has been passed down through the national grapevine of jokes and anecdotes:
A businessman is vacationing in a sleepy fishing village in Maine. He meets a local fisherman who is docking his small boat, which contains a few fat fish. The businessman admires the man’s haul of the day and asks how long it took to catch.
“Oh, a couple of hours,” is the reply.
“Why didn’t you stay out longer and catch more fish?”
“Because I already have enough to feed my family.”
“Well,” the businessman continues, “what do you do with the rest of your time?”
“I sleep late, play with my kids, make love to my wife, walk into town every night where I have a glass of wine and play cards with my buddies.”
The businessman hands him his card. “I’m a business consultant. I can help you out. You need to spend more time fishing. Then you could sell off the extra fish and buy a bigger boat with the money. With the income from the bigger boat, you could buy several more boats. If you play your cards right, eventually you could have a fleet of fishing boats and your own cannery. You could then move to New York where you would be able to oversee your growing operation.”
“How long will all this take?” the fisherman asks.
“Twenty years.”
“Then what?”
“Then you would go public and sell your stock for millions.”
“Then what?”
“Then you would be able to retire. You could move to a small fishing village where you could afford to sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, make love to your wife, and play cards with your buddies every night.”
PART I
BRAINWASHED
CHAPTER 1: IF I’M SO SUCCESSFUL, WHY AM I TAKING PROZAC?
[The law of success] says that a failure in society and in business has no right to live. Unlike the law against incest, the law of success is not administered by statute or church, but it is very nearly as powerful in its grip upon men.
Arthur Miller
America is obsessed with success. Through numerous sources, the concept is imposed on us practically from birth. The educational system shames children who don’t measure up and injects them with the notion that the worst label that can be pasted on them is that of failure. In study after study, when young people are asked what they want to be when they grow up, it is not the type of work they stress as important; the salient point for them is that whatever field they go into, they have to be successful at it.
And what do they mean by that? What is the yardstick for measuring success? More often than not it amounts to how rich and famous we are. It translates into a big house in an opulent neighborhood, a magazine-cover spouse, a couple of luxury sedans in the driveway, exotic travel cruises. How many teenagers think the image of success is a person sitting cross-legged on a mountaintop, someone with few possessions but in a magnificent state of serenity? Or a firefighter with a modest home in a middle-class community with a happy family and a dog? Or a single writer living in a small Manhattan apartment who loves the perks of the big city?
Webster’s New World Dictionary confirms the conventional meaning of the word. It defines success as “the favorable outcome of an undertaking or career, or the attainment of a desired goal — especially the gaining of wealth, fame, and rank.” One famous book on success is called Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. It implies that success can only be equated with riches. Everywhere you turn, the media and the culture bombard you with this view by idolizing Bill Gates, Lady Gaga, and George Clooney, and by downplaying anyone whose net worth adds up to less than seven figures. I don’t buy it.
The purpose of this book is to help you evaluate whether you buy it. Do you know what it really means to be a success, or have you been brainwashed? If you truly want an answer, here is the question to ask yourself: “What is really important to me?” You may come up with a page full of answers to that, but if you pull them all together and distill the common factor, what you will probably arrive at is this: The one thing that is truly important to us all is quality of life. How do you spend your short time on this planet? My theory is that life is just one long weekend and nothing more. It isn’t a decade. It isn’t a year, or even a week. You’re born on a Thursday afternoon, you hit some rush hour traffic trying to get out of town, you have a few good times with sun and ski, and then you die on Monday morning. How much time can you afford to lose between Thursday and Monday? What’s the point of being alive if you don’t make the most of your weekend?
It doesn’t matter how much you earn, or how much you possess, or how many trophies you have won. Life is really about how you spend your time from day to day to day. None of us knows if we’ll run out of money, but we know with absolute certainty that we will all run out of time.
Time is our most important commodity. You sense that you are truly successful when you experience the deep satisfaction and happiness of knowing that right here, right now, you spend your time doing what is meaningful to you. You are able to be yourself in an authentic way and go after what your self wants. If you have reached this point, you can declare with equanimity that you are not wasting your time.
Few people in America can look into their hearts and say that. The more money we make, the more disillusioned we seem to be. A good indicator that this is true is the rise in the number of depressed people. Depression, which is often caused by stress, is characterized by mood swings, reduced energy level, loss of appetite and sex drive, and feelings of guilt or worthlessness. Statistics allege that the percentage of Americans experiencing serious depression at some point in their lives has increased from one percent in 1900 to more than 15 percent today. Some medical sources believe that one in five Americans, including 25 percent of women and 10 percent of men, will face some form of depression during their lifetime. A third of all cases are serious enough to justify medical intervention.
The U.S. News & World Report has suggested that as many as twenty-eight million Americans have taken some form of antidepressant medication. There are twenty-three different antidepressant medications currently available in the United States, including Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, Luvox, Celexa, Effexor, Adapin, Aventyl, Wellbutrin, and Marplan. They are approved to treat a hair-raising list of disorders including major depressive episode (MDE), obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), panic disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), social phobia/social anxiety disorder, and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). The most famous antidepressant, Prozac, has been used to treat forty million people in one hundred countries. “Prozac has catapulted depression from an embarrassing illness to a socially acceptable side-effect of increasingly stressful lifestyles,” says Country Doctor.
In fact, according to the Harvard School of Public Health, depression is expected to be the second leading cause of death, after heart disease, in the twenty-first century. And because of job-related stress, say the folks at Harvard, we are facing an epidemic of heart attacks, strokes, ulcers, mental breakdowns, back problems, and severe gastrointestinal disorders.
What this means is that in the middle of the longest period of affluence in history, people are sick and depressed. Or they’re headed in that direction. They are disillusioned by the conventional definition of success. Instead of making them feel successful, society’s vision has left them alienated, unfulfilled, empty, and betrayed. People know that their general malaise not only involves the jobs they don’t love, but also an array of situations, from mediocre relationships to undesirable living environments, which they fell into without really choosing and from which they can’t escape. If this is a nation of happily successful people, how can this be explained?
THE SUCCESS TRAP
One of the major reasons the American mood is headed in a downward spiral is what I call the success trap. People are lured into putting all their resources — their heart, soul, effort, and time — into achieving a particular goal by being promised a kind of enduring happiness when they reach it, only to find themselves abjectly miserable years down the line. They work hard to accumulate all the symbols of success, but discover that they are still dealing with the same old feelings of frustration and inadequacy.
How do we get sucked into this trap? I have to admit that when you start out in life, you are outgunned and outnumbered. The culture shepherds people into standard careers before they’ve had a chance to taste life and decide for themselves what they want to do. Consequently, they are denied permission to explore their own route to satisfaction through work and lifestyle. Society discourages people from exploring in a personal way the path they truly want to follow. Instead, they are often guided down a path that is completely unsuitable to their heart’s desire. They are spoon-fed a definition of success that is alien to their core being, and they are too young to understand what is happening to them. This is called social brainwashing.
Family Values
It all starts here. “Make sure you always have a day job.” Acting out of the best of motives, parents often let their own fears get translated into what they teach their children about life: that people can’t do what they really want and survive. Joseph Campbell was a professor of comparative mythology at Sarah Lawrence College and the author of many seminal works linking mythology to modern life. His ideas, popularized by his book The Hero With A Thousand Faces and the PBS mini-series featuring Campbell’s discussions with journalist Bill Moyers, influenced a generation of thinkers. Campbell’s refreshing thoughts on the meaning of success are exemplified by a compelling story he used to tell. While eating dinner in a restaurant one evening, Campbell overheard a conversation between two parents and their twelve-year-old boy. The father told the boy to drink his tomato juice. The boy refused, saying, “I don’t like tomato juice.” At this point, the mother joined in: “Don’t tell him to do something he doesn’t want to do.” The father snapped back with, “He can’t go through life doing what he wants to do. If he only does what he wants, he’ll be dead. Look at me. I’ve never done a thing I wanted in my whole life!”
In a more subtle way, children pick up the generic values of the family system by recognizing and living up to what is expected of them. One important idea that is communicated is that it would be unforgivable for the children to slip down a peg on society’s economic scale when they grow up. However much money your parents make, it is a foregone conclusion that what you make should exceed that amount.
Educational System
The push continues with the educational system. Schools tend to operate like personal training seminars for the business world. Teachers act as functionaries of society; either overtly or covertly, they end up espousing its ideals, promoting its values, and promulgating its definition of success. From early childhood you are driven to get good grades so you can get into a good college. Why? So you can get a high-paying job. If your grades fall a little, the threat that hangs over you is: “When you grow up, do you want to flip burgers for a living?” The old carrot and stick routine is widely used. “If you do well, you’ll get to buy all the adult toys Mommy and Daddy have. If you don’t, everyone will look down on you.”
Media
Few movies or television programs show people genuinely being happy with less. Movie stars and sports stars are walking advertisements for the message that you’ll get all you ever wanted out of life if you make oodles of money and get your picture in the paper. Rich and famous people positively glow with success. They radiate the message: “Wouldn’t you like to be like me?” These values are raised to an almost messianic level when they appear as flickering images on a huge screen in a dark movie theater.
Advertising
The whole idea behind Madison Avenue is to get you to buy more stuff, to spend more money on products, so that you too can project the American Dream. Advertising campaigns suck you in when you’re young and keep you on a string your whole life if they can. Children and teenagers are particularly susceptible to their guile, their skill at convincing us that we need to spend money to have a good life. One classic example of selling the public a bill of goods is the campaign that convinced millions of American teens that they had to wear hundred-dollar sneakers. Another is the one selling them on carrying beepers so they won’t miss a phone call. If you want to see cultural pressure at work promoting the importance of image, just watch teenagers in malls. Their behavior is not subtle.
Peer Pressure
Once again, this trap is especially effective with young people. As early as the ninth grade, teenagers are sent to career counselors to decide what they want to do with the rest of their lives. They are presented with a range of acceptable choices. In many high schools there is a great deal of competition over getting into the best colleges. I cringe at the recollection of the peer pressure I experienced when competing for high scores on my college boards and the Law School Admission Test. America is not alone in this. In Japan, students go through the worst Exam Hell in the world in order to get into an acceptable university. Some Japanese students commit suicide if they don’t make it.
The Culture at Large
In the Industrial Age, the work ethic glorifies work for its own sake, not necessarily for the joy or satisfaction it brings. As a male, I had it drummed into me that my identity was based on the work I did; this is a common problem in our culture. It took me years to overcome this confusion. Most of my older friends still suffer from it. Even feminist Susan Faludi acknowledged this in an interview for her book, Stiffed: “These days every young man is supposed to be an Internet billionaire by the time he’s twenty-two or he’s a failure.” In the past twenty years or so, women have become caught up in the same dilemma. In my grandmother’s time, the source of a woman’s disillusionment was being stuck in the home. Today she has the same opportunity as a man to be disillusioned and frustrated in her career.
And don’t be fooled into thinking that the youth of today are any smarter than their parents. The workforce of tomorrow is following in our footsteps. According to a study reported in The Los Angeles Times, 270,000 college freshmen polled in the fall of 2000 listed making money as their chief goal in life. High on the list were also status and recognition. Nobody listed finding their heart’s desire or pursuing goals that were personally fulfilling but would make very little money.
As a young person, you fell into the success trap because you didn’t know any better. You lacked a wide enough perspective to process the input coming your way and then make a conscious decision about whether or not to go along with the program. You had no independent experience of the world and your mind was still forming. Most people go through their entire young adult years caught up in the success trap. They don’t wake up to the snare until they spot their first gray hairs in the mirror. In my opinion, you are not even an adult in this culture until you reach the wise age of forty. Up until then, you lack the life experience to know who you are and what you want.
THE NOOSE TIGHTENS
Once you’ve been sucked into the trap, however, it is hard to get out. For one thing, brainwashing is very effective at hiding its existence. The conditioned mind doesn’t tend to recognize that it is conditioned without some prompting. You may know that your life is a disappointment to you, but you probably think it’s your own fault. You don’t realize that you made the decisions you did because you were conned. You pass the problem off as your own inability to get the most out of life or you pass it on to some incidental cause: “If only I had moved to Phoenix where they have better job opportunities.” “If only I had become an orthodontist instead of an aerobics instructor.”
Let’s say you make it over the first obstacle: you wake up and smell the roses. Something isn’t right here. What are you going to do about it? Not many people jump out of bed one morning and say, “Oh boy! I think I’ll overturn everything I’ve done in my life up till now. Start all over. This will be fun.” Change is regarded as highly stressful and not something you willingly take on. Psychologists have found that when people want to change even the tiniest habit, they encounter great resistance in themselves. Imagine the resistance you will be up against if you want to change something on a grand scale. For some people, it is excruciatingly painful just to admit they’ve been wrong. They cannot bear to say, “Gee, I’ve just wasted the last twenty-five years of my life because I made a wrong turn when I was seventeen.” They cannot come to grips with the admission that they’ve made such a mistake. It is easier for them to justify how they’ve spent their lives than it is to face their errors head on and admit to them. It can take tremendous courage to do this.
Of course, the culture makes it even more difficult to change because of a little trick called golden handcuffs. Golden handcuffs is a nickname for a trap that people don’t, unfortunately, seem to mind being stuck in. Many people cannot be creative and risk even talking about a new lifestyle that would be an authentic match for them because they are so attached to the rich trappings of the lives they are in now. The way they are living may be all wrong for them, but they do love those perks. While it may be difficult to feel sorry for such individuals, they are truly deserving of our pity because they are spending their lives merely fulfilling a destiny they were never meant for, living out dreams they were brainwashed and seduced into believing in. In fact, such a dream is nothing but a silken spider web.
Not everyone wearing the golden handcuffs is rich. For many, there are simply comforts or perks attached to their present lives that they feel they cannot give up. Everyone knows people who could make lengthy lists of what they dislike about their jobs, but who stay because the paychecks are satisfactory and they have their own parking spaces right under their office windows. Perhaps the next job won’t pay as well and perhaps they’ll have to park three blocks away. Yet how much of a sacrifice is it to give that up for work that is far more satisfying when the day is ended? We’ve all heard people who live on one coast complain that they wish they lived on the opposite coast. Why don’t they move? It’s the job market “which is so much more reliable here,” or “my house is almost paid off.” One of the most common complaints is “I have got to get out of this relationship.” I’ve known people who have been with the same mate for years, and for at least half that time they have repeated this tired, hackneyed refrain. The older they get, the harder it is to make a decision because, “I don’t want to be alone at my age.” I’ve even heard, “I don’t want to break up the CD collection.” They seem not to have heard the chorus of people who find themselves unattached at age fifty or sixty and it feels like freedom. For the first time in their lives, these people feel that being single is perfectly agreeable.
Focusing on such minor reasons for refusing to opt for change is a result of not seeing the forest for the trees. The person with the expensive toys has so distracted himself that he fails to see that his overall sense of well being is suffering. The person trapped in a lusterless relationship forgets that being with another person is supposed to bring warmth and love, not just stability. The love is gone, yet they stay anyway.
FACING THE ENEMY
Let’s say you’ve overcome even this hurdle. You have endured your dark night of the soul and come out fresh and alive in the morning. You have exposed the success trap and you’ve decided to take action. Now you have to face your family. Don’t assume for a minute that they are going to be supportive of your newfound awareness. Their rejection, in fact, may knock you off your feet because you thought they loved you and wanted only the best for you; now it appears they are just holding you back from following your bliss. Don’t despair too much. They really mean well. It’s just that they are threatened by change as much as you are, and they didn’t initiate this one. You did. They aren’t in control. It would be so much more comfortable for them if you would just stop all this nonsense and stay the same old person to whom they are accustomed.
And if the change you are proposing involves a drop in income, you can expect a reaction that is even more charged. Just imagine how delighted your spouse and kids will be if you tell them that they have to move to a smaller house and sell off a few major appliances so you can become self-actualized.
Outright fear is often the primary factor behind their obstinacy. You are announcing that you want to alter the status quo and they feel threatened by it. “What will this mean to me? If she turns this part of her life — and mine — on its head, what else could be overturned? Think of all the things that can go wrong when you fool around with the way things are. Why mess with a good thing?” Being faced with the unknown is highly unsettling for them. For instance, you may want to pick up and move a thousand miles away, and your mother, who has never had one of her children move out of state, starts pulling her hair out: “I did not give birth to you and spend two years changing your diapers just so you could move away!”
And finally, there are your friends. The people with whom you play racquetball, have power lunches, meet down at the bowling alley on Friday night — they will act as if you’ve lost your mind. “You’re going half-time on your job so you can take acting lessons? Are you nuts?” Once again, these people might not have malevolent intentions. They may just be frightened for you. It is inconceivable to them that this harebrained scheme of yours is going to lead to anything but disaster. Then too, it may be threatening to them in an entirely different way. It’s possible that they too have wanted to escape the rat race for years and have been feeding themselves excuses for not doing so. The excuses let them out of having to take risks. If you take the risk and it pays off, their old excuses won’t work anymore, and they will have to face up to a few truths of their own. Your friends and co-workers may end up becoming unwitting collaborators with the forces that are keeping you from being fully alive. When I quit my high-paying corporate job to become an actor, a close friend said to me, “This is just temporary insanity. You’ll get over it.”
THE PRICE YOU PAY
Given all these obstacles, how many of us fall by the wayside and don’t put up a genuine fight for our own souls? We label our malady “middle age depression,” and after that it’s just business as usual.
When we do this, we pay a price. The price is burnout, disillusionment, and all too often addiction to some substance that helps numb the pain. Dr. Herbert Freudenberger, author of the book Burn Out, asks, “Why, with all these goals and visible rewards which we as Americans have accepted so unquestioningly, has the result been a singular lack of satisfaction?” His explanation is that we are simply burning out. According to him, a person who has burned out is “someone in a state of fatigue or frustration brought about by devotion to a cause, way of life, or relationship that failed to produce the expected reward.” What he is saying then, is that people are not at their wits’ end because they work too hard or worry too much about money or care too much about their jobs. Burnout results when any of these situations exist along with no payoff.
The great con is that we expect a payoff for all our troubles. People don’t mind doing something difficult for a living if they love it. They don’t mind sacrifice if there is a spiritual reward for it. They can handle trial and tribulation if the result is personal satisfaction. The problem in our society is that whatever the magic goal of all this prosperity is supposed to be, it is proving extremely elusive.
So the most affluent society in history is plagued with rampant discontent. When people are cut off from a personal connection to what they do in life, from being in alignment with who they really are, they become disenchanted, sometimes even bitter, and they end up seeking solace in drugs, alcohol, food, and sex. In extreme cases of mental anguish, they may often resort to violence.
INTOXICATED WITH SUCCESS
Consider a friend of mine who I’ll call Jim. He was raised in a dismal section of the Bronx. While growing up, all he could think of was keeping up with his brainy older brother who later became a physician. Jim took on responsibility early, marrying right out of college and hiring on immediately with a large conglomerate. He was able to buy a house in an affluent Connecticut suburb and support four children by working long hours. Eventually he moved up to expensive cars, fancy restaurants, the works. Even his teenagers drove BMWs. No doubt about it, Jim had reached a pinnacle.
What was wrong with this picture? The fact that Jim hated his job went largely ignored by him and everyone else. By the time I met him, Jim was having his first drink of the day before noon. Any occasion was an excuse for a drink. “It’s Tuesday. Let’s have a bourbon sour.” He managed to get by at home and at work because he was high-functioning, and he was an entertaining drunk. Nobody could tell a joke like Jim. People liked him, so they let him get away with it.
As time went on, however, his drinking took on dark overtones. One day, I noticed that his wife Julie was limping. I found out they’d had a fight the night before and Jim had hit her in the spine with a golf club. Good old Jim had a problem, and it was spilling over onto his entire family. Shortly after Julie’s injury, their adorable little five-year-old daughter began to stutter. I think the real low point for Jim was the time he was so drunk that he missed the last train home, and spent the night sleeping it off like a derelict on a bench in Grand Central Station.
Even Jim couldn’t hide from his predicament forever. Eventually he was driven to go into Alcoholics Anonymous and get sober. But by then, the long hours and the spent liver had worn him out. He was never quite the same. I would see him on the commuter train looking as if the life had been drained out of him. It seemed that without the crutch of the bottle he could not maintain the facade that all was well. He was still going through the motions, but all of the old liquor-infused enthusiasm had disappeared.
One day in a parking lot, he sadly admitted to me that the two things he had missed out on in life were becoming a stand-up comedian and taking up fly fishing. Alas, he had been too much of a “success” to get around to either one.
BREAKING AWAY AND FOLLOWING YOUR BLISS
Some people do manage to break away from the cultural consciousness. They are the ones who epitomize a personalized version of success that translates into true happiness and satisfaction. One such person was my Uncle Maury. He worked as a motion picture operator and never made a lot of money. Yet I would count him as one of the true success stories I have come across because he enjoyed his lifestyle. He had plenty of free time to go fishing, which was what he enjoyed the most. He would drive home from work, give his paycheck to my aunt, and grab his fishing gear. It was glaringly obvious to me as a boy that Uncle Maury had something special going for him that the traditionally successful members of my family lacked. While the other men were irritable and moody, Uncle Maury always had a smile on his face, an easygoing manner, and a joke to tell. At the age of eighty-five, he still walked with a noticeable bounce in his step.
Another hero of mine was a man whose name I did not even know. I met him when I was twenty-one. My buddy and I were on leave from the Quantico, Virginia, Marine Corps Base where we were stationed. As we headed to New York on the Pennsylvania Railroad, the conductor came by to check our tickets. At first sight, he was a rather ordinary-looking man, under average height but solidly built. His entire job consisted of asking passengers for their tickets and then punching holes in them. That was it. Nothing terribly complicated. Yet this plain man had an air of self-assured competence about him that captured my attention. It caused me to remark to my friend, “That conductor could be a bank president, the way he carries himself.” He was not high up on the totem pole, but he was completely comfortable with his job and with himself.
Many times in the ensuing quarter of a century I have thought about that railroad conductor. For me, he was a living demonstration that success has little to do with fame and fortune. This was a man who felt himself to be successful. He judged it from the inside, not according to outside influences. “You may have a success in life,” Joseph Campbell said in The Power of Myth, “but then just think of it — what kind of life was it? You’ve never done the thing you wanted to do.” If you are following somebody else’s plan, living by their definitions and rules, what kind of life are you having? Can you really call it your own? Are you following your bliss or going along with something you saw in a television commercial?
When you do have the feeling that you have found your bliss, Campbell urges you to “stay with it, and don’t let anyone throw you off.” This is where tenacity comes in. To follow your bliss you don’t have to fight the system, but you do have to negotiate with it. It will place obstacles in your path, and you have to get pretty nimble at side-stepping them. If you don’t, your beautiful long weekend between birth and death will be over before you know it.
CONFUSING IDENTITY AND WORK
One thing that holds a lot of people back from making the changes necessary to break away from the unsatisfying lifestyle they’ve created is a little number called identity. Identity, according to Webster’s New World Dictionary, is the “condition of being a specific thing or person; individuality.”
Identity is one of those things we usually take for granted because it is like the air we breathe. We don’t think about air because it is invisible and it is always there surrounding us. You will find yourself supremely aware of air, however, if you are ever cut off from it. The same is true of having an identity. We take it for granted every minute of the day. We look in the mirror and we see “me.” “Me” is the object — with all its memories, associations, and history — that you take yourself to be. It’s the tag you go by. It is all important. People live and die for it: “I am a Muslim. I hate Jews and I will die to prove it.” What is that if not identity?
When people introduce themselves to others, primarily they are introducing their identity to the other person’s identity. “Hi, I’m Madeleine. I’m a commodities broker.” “I’m Tom. I’m an accountant.” Unfortunately, men especially and women increasingly, wed their identity to what they do in the marketplace. It plays a very large part in how we tag ourselves, and there are a multitude of associations that dictate whether that tag makes us proud of ourselves or ashamed of ourselves. The reason failure in the workplace has such a huge charge is that it affects our entire identity. If we perceive ourselves as failures professionally, for both men and women nowadays, that strikes at the foundation of our sense of worth.
Paul Terhorst, in Cashing In on the American Dream, observed: “The American Way often amounts to masochism rather than pleasure. When we fail at something we’re told to tough it out rather than stop, reevaluate, then switch to something we’re good at.” In our society, we can’t switch that easily. We can’t simply break away from a job where we’ve been sleepwalking for ten years to one that lights a fire inside us. Before we can leave a job, we have to find a way to do it in which we don’t feel like we’re going out in failure, our tail between our legs. This pressure makes it extremely difficult to change when change is necessary.
Terhorst made an interesting discovery for himself. As a consultant working for a Big Six accounting firm, he decided that the central issue was not what he thought he did at work but what he actually did. He posed the question, “What do I do at work all day that is so goddamn important?” When he took a good, honest look at his work day, he found that what he actually did from nine to five was talk on the telephone. Once he stripped away everything else and got down to this one essential activity, he was able to take some of the weight off his shoulders about the importance of succeeding. He could separate himself from his work and weigh other things of value in his life.
Some lip service is paid, in this country, to family values — religion, responsibility to children and community, morality, and so on. But for the most part, the American Dream embraces one value: Become a financial success. To make a free choice to leave the situation you are in, your entire personality structure — that is, all of who you take yourself to be — cannot be threatened by the idea that you will be a failure if you “step down in the world.” It requires courage to take the risk of changing an entire lifestyle, but that courage must stand on a firm ground of self-confidence. You must find an identity that is based upon real substance, not on where you punch your time clock. You are made up of many more parts than your career. Your identity should reflect all of those parts: your likes and dislikes, value system, relationships, sexuality, hobbies, and so on.
THE SUCCESS TOTEM POLE
In our culture, there are five positions a person can occupy on the success totem pole. These positions indicate not only how much money the person makes, but his attitude about where he is and his level of satisfaction. Success is a state of mind. If you don’t feel successful, you’re not – no matter what your income may be or how famous you are.
Category One: The Rich and Famous
“I’m rich and famous, and I like it!”
Donald Trump is the perfect role model for this category. He grew up in a family that lionized success, and he made his parents’ values his own. It is the old-fashioned, American capitalist definition of success, and it works for him. I’m sure it has never occurred to the man to redefine his values and take a critical look at what being successful has brought him and what it has cost him. In this book, I do not place any judgment on people in this category because their hopes and aspirations are congruent with their goals. There is nothing wrong with being a business executive living in a penthouse overlooking Central Park, and being chauffeured around in a Rolls Royce. However, people who are able to find complete fulfillment through these attainments are in an increasingly dwindling group in this country.
Category Two: The Disillusioned
“I have acquired all the conventional accoutrements of a person who has made it, but I don’t feel successful.”
A classic example is Elvis Presley, arguably one of the most famous and successful people of the last half of the twentieth century. By all accounts, he was also one of the most disappointed in life. He had Graceland, pink and gold Cadillacs, closets full of rhinestone-studded outfits, loyal and adoring fans, and then — death by overdose. He arose from poverty and built a brilliant career so he could acquire all the perks that had been denied to him as a youngster. But whatever meaning and satisfaction he had been looking for, he never found it in the lifestyle he chose. One night as he was ready to go onstage in Las Vegas, someone reportedly said to him, “You look tired.” With an exhausted sigh, he responded, “I’m tired of being Elvis.” He had spent his entire life constructing this creature, and in the end he was stuck with it.
How many people fall into the same trap? They spend their lives constructing something they never wanted in the first place. After such a huge investment of time and money, they don’t feel that they can afford to get rid of the monster. A conventional example is the person who suffered through medical school only to find that she hates the smell of hospitals. She would rather open a primitive art gallery and settle for less money. She is a successful surgeon, but she feels empty inside.
Unlike Category One, Category Two is a growing group. Look around. Millions of new people join this club every day. “Gee, I’ve got a swimming pool shaped like a piano, four Mercedes, and a backyard you could play professional football in, but this just isn’t doing it for me.”
Category Three: The Maverick
“I haven’t made it in society’s eyes, but I experience my life as completely fulfilling.”
Everyone’s favorite example of a person in this category is Mother Teresa. There are thousands of anonymous Mother Teresas out there, people who devote their lives to the service of others but haven’t won a Nobel Prize for it. People like Uncle Maury and the train conductor who find personal satisfaction in arenas not applauded by the culture. They may have few possessions and even less security. Because their values fly in the face of the traditional, materialistic values of modern industrialist societies, they need a strong sense of self to stay on track.
Unfortunately, I don’t know many people who fit into Category Three. My yoga teacher does. I know some actors who do. Perhaps this is the category you belong in and you don’t know it. Many people have nontraditional goals hidden inside themselves that they have never acknowledged or considered acting on. Sometimes that unrecognized side is just waiting to show itself.
Category Four: The Unseduced
“I have all the outer accoutrements of success, but my sense of accomplishment lies elsewhere.”
A good example is Joseph Campbell. His work was so brilliant that eventually it brought him money, respect, and fame, but the true compensation for his efforts came from his deep love of philosophy and mythic concepts. People like this have a strong internal value system that withstands the winds of outside influence and transcends the conventional ego needs of riches and adulation. Like those in Category Three, people in Category Four also need a strong sense of self, but in this case it helps them avoid being seduced by the perks of their success.
Category Five: The Dissatisfied
“If only I could attain everything I dream about, then I would finally feel successful.”
It is a fictional character who best exemplifies this category: Willy Loman in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. Willy’s tragedy is that he misses out on every single day of his life by longing for what he will never have. His lifelong mantra starts with “If only...” You can fill in the rest. The “if only” picture is comprised of all those things the culture dangles in front of us that make us feel neglected and left out if we don’t have them. Willy Loman never looks at what he has, only at what others have who are better off, and in his eyes the comparison always diminishes his own value. This is a sure recipe for poisoning one’s life.
Category Five is another growing group in America. In the driveway, they have a perfectly good Honda — slightly dented, yet in perfect working order — but it’s not a BMW, and their least favorite in-laws have a BMW so it’s eating them up inside. Like Willy, they are condemned to a life of perpetual waiting. They go to sleep at night thinking, “If only...”
One way of looking at Category Fives is that they are simply Category One wanna-be’s. They have all the aspirations of the Rich and Famous, but they never made it.
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It is quite problematic to be in some of these categories, whereas in others, life is more harmonious. People in Category Three (Mavericks), for example, generally report high levels of satisfaction and happiness, even though they often spend their time in the midst of human suffering. People in Categories One (The Rich and Famous) and Four (The Unseduced) seem to be mostly satisfied with their lifestyles and content with the paths they have chosen. The most suffering occurs in Categories Two and Five — the Disillusioned and the Dissatisfied. These are the people who torment themselves because their perceptions of happiness do not match up with the lives they have created for themselves. If you want to avoid these categories, instead of taking Prozac, the solution is to re-engineer your lifestyle so that it does reflect your personal desires. But first you would do well to understand the images of success that are promulgated by our culture. The next chapter will help you to appreciate how you may have been taken in by those images.
CHAPTER 2: THE IMAGES OF SUCCESS
Each of us tends to think we see things as they are, that we are objective. But this is not the case. We see the world, not as it is, but as we are — or, as we are conditioned to see it.
Stephen Covey
“Lives of quiet desperation.” What does that mean and why does it seem to apply only to the modern world when the struggle for survival is not as desperate for most people today as it has been throughout history? In other words, if life isn’t that hard, what do we have to be desperate about?