Wired for Success

How to fulfill your potential

Ray Williams is Co-Founder of Success IQ University and President of Ray Williams Associates, Inc., providing leadership development, personal growth, and executive coaching services. See full bio

April 26, 2009, Work

Beware The Toxic Trap of Success

Successful people are often driven by toxic trap of success.

We all want to be successful. It's all about hard work and sacrifice, isn't it? If we just work a little harder, a little faster, a little longer, or if we become better at multi-tasking, we'll get that promotion, earn more money, and our lives will be perfect. Or will they?

Many highly successful men and women feel lonely, cut off, and unfulfilled by their success. So often, their drive for winning threatens their health, relationships and families, leaving them with an eerie vacancy of spirit.

The problem is this: the more people focus their efforts on becoming successful, the less they remember the reason they wanted that success. For those that actually reach the success pinnacle, their focus becomes staying on top, so winning the game isn't really possible.

Despite dramatic technological advances aimed at efficiency, executives and managers have less leisure time than before in human history, thanks to corporate downsizing, merger, increased workloads and higher performance expectations.

Dr. Paul Pearsall, a clinical psychologist and best-selling author of 15 books, lays out in his most recent offering,Toxic Success, the details of a 10 year study of 100 "winners" and their families and associates. The study found that well-adjusted high achievers and those who suffer from what he calls toxic success syndrome, approach their lives in significantly different ways. He confirmed that most victims of this syndrome are distant, detached, distracted and suffer from a form of attention deficit disorder. In contrast, people who experience "sweet success" are in an almost constant state of delight in their work and play and are able to direct their attention to the moment.

Jane Austin, author of What No On Ever Tells You About Leading for Results , says that many people in the throes of toxic success argue that they "will lose their edge" or slow down if they cut back on work commitments. She offers the following myth busters:

I'll do whatever it takes until I really make it. This distorted view assumes that life doesn't exist until you've reached your goal;
My success is defined by my career and how much money I make. This distortion places no value on the complete individual.
I'll live a balanced life once I'm successful. This "if, then" argument places responsibility for life in the future and ignores that fact that behaviors become hard wired and hard to change.
I have to stay on the fast track to be seen as a player. This fear-driven argument leaves control of your life in someone else's hands.

Austin recommends that organizations create work environments that support healthy success and a balanced lifestyle by measuring results not in face-time but by aligning worker strengths with job responsibilities, by incorporating self-management into performance appraisals and by executives walking the talk of work-life balance.

Successful and in-demand executive training programs such as those offered by Success IQ University, emphasize a balanced approach to life without sacrificing the commitment to success. The bottom line here is that success is possible without a toxic workaholic obsession with work.