Summary: As a people, Americans love to worship the obsessives among us. Witness the near deification of Steve Jobs and other amazing business people. We are quick to forgive them their sins of anti-social, bullying and “ends justify the means” behavior since their accomplishments are so great. We begin to see their obsessive behaviors as the one true secret to business and life success. Unfortunately, business thought-leaders have tied onto this star, as well, and seem to think that this obsessive behavior is the ONLY way to achieve success in any business. While certainly there are some success stories of obsessive leaders leading a company to greatness, to expect everyone to be obsessive is a road to disaster. Listen to this Podcast Looking to Build the Career You Deserve! One-to-One Career Consulting with Douglas E. Welch Read more about it! Like Career Opportunities on Facebook Your career is important for your stability, your livelihood and your sense of accomplishment. That said, it should only be one part of your life. Your career should never dominate your life. Sure, we love to celebrate the obsessive entrepreneur, but I believe that those people are the outliers in society as a whole. While they may see no problem with sacrificing everything for their career, I think most of us would rather seek a balance in all the various aspects of our lives including, career, family, recreation, simplicity and love. It takes a very odd person -- perhaps even clinically obsessive -- to ignore all the other aspects of their lives -- all the other amazing things in the world -- and focus solely on business success. Let me be clear. Thank goodness there are those obsessives who can drive new innovations and tremendous accomplishments in the world. They are to be lauded for much that they accomplish. That said, I think we are doing a great disservice when we hold up these people -- these outliers -- as the norm that everyone else should -- no, MUST -- emulate. Talk to any career counsellor and I can almost guarantee one the first things they will say will be, “You are trying to do too much, too many different things. You have to FOCUS on one of them!” As someone who thinks and acts otherwise, I believe it is only a minority of people that can find such a hyper-focused life possible or rewarding. For me, there are far too many cool things to be investigated to limit my life to only one obsessive pursuit. Further, while my methods may not lead to the dramatic success of some obsessives, it will lead to my own personal success. The success will look different, but if I do it right, it can still be counted, by many factors, as a success. For most of us -- the “normals” if you like -- life has a daily balance and subtlety. Further, there are many more of us, than them. Trying to be something that you are not, simply because someone has told you this is the only path, is destructive to you and your career. Like Cinderella’s sisters constantly trying to fit into a shoe that is too small or too large, trying to be an obsessive when you are not is a foolish waste of time and energy. Even worse, when you are “trying” to be something you are not, your chances of success in that role lessen with each passing day. You are fighting against your very nature and it shows. We are so enamoured with obsessive success that we have now begun to mistake the minority for the majority when it comes to business success. We see the great obsessive successes and begin to think that everyone should/could/would behave in exactly the same fashion. We deny that there is any other path to success and even deny that any other success exists but this one. There are many levels and types of success, though, and we ignore that at our peril. As I said in a recent talk at CareerCampSCV (Santa Clarita Valley), “For many, if you can support yourself and your family doing something you love, you are successful!” It may be a different type of success,
