My client was really struggling with feeling lost in his life. A senior executive, he had a successful career, healthy family, a huge house in the country, took vacations…he had all that comes with the good life. The American Dream. And he felt absolutely dead inside. A zombie.

If you read my site you will learn about a particular aspect of Disquiet: one which emerges when someone is at the top of their game, has all the trappings of having made it, and yet, does not feel connected to that success.

Often they feel nothing, dead inside. They have long forgotten why they worked so hard to get what they dreamed of and now feel no sense of accomplishment or satisfaction. I have found this theme among many of my clients. I call it the Empty Success Syndromeâ„¢.

I was recently in India on a business trip. I got to know my driver pretty well over the course of a week. He shared wonderful stories of his life and family. Despite living on very low wages and in a manner that in the US would be described as extreme poverty, he described himself as very happy and successful.

He was proud of his job (what he made in a month wouldn’t buy a decent meal in a large US city). He took delight in playing with his young children. He was appreciative of friendships that developed with the people he drives.

There was a great sense of humility and gratitude in this guy. He took his job as driver very seriously. He drove carefully, kept an immaculate car and was impeccable in being on time. 

Driving in India is a crazy death-defying experience. If a bicycle, water buffalo or truck even so much as scratched the company car, he would be docked a month’s worth of wages! That is a lot of pressure. And through it all, he seemed very content and confident.

What is the source of our sense of success? Is it contigent on what our culture defines as the symbols and criteria for making it? Or is it sourced in the internal guidance system in us, where our actions are in alignment with our values?

Do you ever experince that deep satisfaction that comes from living your life with complete integrity to what you care about, what you value and what you long for?

John Wooden was the coach for the UCLA Bruins from 1967-1975. He took the team to win 10 NCAA national championships, including seven in a row, and at one time won 88 consecutive games. He defined success as

“Success is peace of mind, which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to do your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming.”

I heard that a player on the team wrote that Coach Wooden didn’t let his team look at the scoreboard during the game. It was all about how you played. He taught the team to play with all-out effort and concentration, to give it all they had. And that was the criteria for success.

Check it out with yourself.

What tells you that you are successful or not? How contingent is that feeling of success on external factors and the definitions of our pop culture?

And how satisfying is that?

 

 

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Tags: Life, The Disquiet, midlife crisis, working with the Disquiet, john wooden, struggling with success, success

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 17th, 2007 at 9:10 am and is filed under Life, The Disquiet, midlife crisis, working with the Disquiet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.