The Superman Syndrome

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"Life is what happens while you are busy making ...
--John LennonI just got back from a business trip to the East ... I was away several hundred email messages ...
addition "Life is what happens while you are busy making otherplans." --John LennonI just got back from a business trip to the East Coast.While I was away several hundred email messages accumulated,in addition to a tall stack of postal mail and a full voicemail box. Had I been here to respond to all of it as it camein, I would have spent much more time doing so.
When facedwith the massive volume, I became much more efficient. Iasked myself, "What's most important?" And my clarity andfocus were much sharper as a result.
When I returned from mytrip, what I really wanted was to spend time with myfamily... not with my email, inbox, or telephone.
With greatclarity and intent, I deleted much of my email without evenreading it.While on my trip I came across a book titled, "The SupermanSyndrome: Why the Information Age Threatens Your Future andWhat You Can Do About It," by Robert Kamm. In his book, Kammnotes that Americans are working an average of six weeks tothree months more per year than they did just a decade ago.Additionally, more than 70% of people in offices workweekends and more than 70% of American parents feel theydon't spend enough time with their kids.
Kamm says that theSuperman Syndrome is characterized by an inability orunwillingness to throw the off-switch... whether on a cellphone, the computer, or in our own brains.
We are the mostdistracted generation in the history of the human race. Anddistracted people make for distracted and unavailableparents -- perhaps one of the biggest threats our growinggeneration faces in the 21st Century.Clients often come to me feeling overwhelmed.
They want morecontrol and balance in their lives. I explain that thecontrol comes from within.
Shedding the Superman cape is thefirst step! I tell my clients that they must be willing tobypass the external distractions and demands on their time,look inside to their own values and priorities, and thenmake choices so their focus and activities match thesevalues and priorities. For example, if you truly value yourhealth and your family, but you are working too many hoursto take care of yourself or to be home while your family isstill awake, then you've lost control of your life.Kamm notes that the commitment to slow down and focus onthings that really matter in life must be made at thecorporate as well as the individual level.
He states that"the Superman Syndrome is a dangerous workplace successformula that forces men and women to leap tall buildings andoutrun speeding bullets -- at the expense of personal lives,families, children and even business productivity. Thisrepresents a major hypocrisy implicit in nearly everyboardroom in America: The belief that we should beaccountable to work but not to our families."This begs the question, "What does it matter if you win therat race?" You're still a rat!Change -- even good change -- is stressful for most people.And today, the speed of change is doubling exponentiallyevery 18 months.
The deafening roar of change is the reasonthat 70% of illness is due to stress, and the top sixleading causes of death for American adults are stress-related. It is not change itself -- but our inability toadapt to change -- that creates the rub for most of us.
Weare creatures of habit, and old patterns are hard to change,even when they no longer serve us well. Health careprofessionals note that we are so addicted to our fast-pacedlives that it often takes a life-threatening crisis such asa heart attack or cancer to slow us down.
Making the changesnecessary to leave the fast lane behind is not quick, andfor most, it is not easy. That's why practices such as yoga,meditation, and working with a life coach have become sopopular.Time to Graduate: Get a Life!As we approach the time of year to celebrate graduations, Ifind it particularly fitting to share excerpts from acommencement address made by Anna Quindlen.
As she began herspeech to the graduating class of Villanova University inPennsylvania, this novelist told the audience, "My work ishuman nature. Real life is all I know.
Don't ever confusethe two, your life and your work. The second is only part ofthe first."Quindlen went on to share some important life lessons thatall of us can benefit from: "You will walk out of here this afternoon with only one thing that no one else has.
There will be hundreds of people out there with your same degree; there will be thousands of people doing what you want to do for a living. But you will be the only person alive who has sole custody of your life.
Your particular life. Your entire life.
Not just your life at a desk, or your life on a bus, or in a car, or at the computer. Not just the life of your mind, but the life of your heart.
Not just your bank account but your soul. Get a life.
A real life, not a manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger paycheck, the larger house. Do you think you'd care so very much about those things if you blew an aneurysm one afternoon, or found a lump in your breast? Get a life in which you are not alone.
Find people you love, and who love you. And remember that love is not leisure, it is work.
Pick up the phone. Send an email.
Write a letter. Get a life in which you are generous.
And realize that life is the best thing ever, and that you have no business taking it for granted. Care so deeply about its goodness that you want to spread it around.
Take money you would have spent on beers and give it to charity. Work in a soup kitchen.
Be a big brother or sister. All of you want to do well.
But if you do not do good too, then doing well will never be enough. It is so easy to waste our lives, our days, our hours, our minutes.
It is so easy to take for granted the color of our kids' eyes, the way the melody in a symphony rises and falls and disappears and rises again. It is so easy to exist instead of to live.
I learned to live many years ago. Something really, really bad happened to me, something that changed my life in ways that, if I had my druthers, it would never have been changed at all.
And what I learned from it is what, today, seems to be the hardest lesson of all. I learned to love the journey, not the destination.
I learned that it is not a dress rehearsal, and that today is the only guarantee you get. I learned to look at all the good in the world and try to give some of it back because I believed in it, completely and utterly.
And I tried to do that, in part, by telling others what I had learned. By telling them this: Consider the lilies of the field.
Look at the fuzz on a baby's ear. Read in the backyard with the sun on your face.
Learn to be happy . And think of life as a terminal illness, because if you do, you will live it with joy and passion as it ought to be lived."Just Do It!"Time is the most important currency, but once you spend it,it's gone." -Rod SteigerIf you struggle to "get a life," here are some concreteaction steps you can take, beginning TODAY!==> Action Idea #1: Identify what you love to do.· If you had more time, what would you do? (Or, if you hada terminal illness, what would you want to do with the timeyou had left?) Write down your response.· What is holding you back from doing this now? Do youchoose to wait for a terminal illness to come along beforeyou make time for what you love most?· Get your calendar out and schedule time to do some of thethings you wrote down.==> Action Idea #2: Identify your values.· Jot down the names of 10-20 people whom you admire.
Theydo not need to be living, and you may have never met them orknown them personally.· After you've completed your list, write down thequalities that you admire in each person you listed. Forexample, if I listed Mother Teresa, I might describe thesequalities: compassionate, generous, unconditional love,lived with meaningful purpose.
The qualities that you admirein others are YOUR values.· How do you honor your values regularly? What is gettingin the way of you honoring your values?==> Action Idea #3: Identify your priorities and passions.· Pretend that you are attending your 100th birthday partyand your closest friends and relatives have gathered tohonor you. What would you want them to say about you? Whatwould represent a life well lived with no regrets?· What matters most to you? What are you most passionateabout? Write it down.· What one thing could you do, that if you did regularly,would make the biggest difference in your personal life? Foryour professional life?· Get out your calendar and begin planning to do thesethings regularly.We get what we settle for.
It's never too late -- or tooearly -- to settle for more. When you are ready to settlefor more -- professionally or personally -- contact me.
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