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The
Superman Syndrome
by Kathy Paauw
"Life is what happens while you are busy making other
plans." --John Lennon
I just got back from a business trip to the East Coast. While I was away
several hundred e-mail messages accumulated, in addition to a tall stack
of mail and a full voice mailbox. Had I been here to respond to all of it
as it came in, I would have spent much more time doing so. When faced with
the massive volume, I became much more efficient. I asked myself,
"What's most important?" And my clarity and focus was much
sharper as a result. When I returned from my
trip, what I really wanted was to spend time with my family… not with my
e-mail, in-box, or the telephone. With great clarity and intent, I deleted
much of my e-mail without even reading it.
While on my trip I came across a book titled The Superman Syndrome: Why
the Information Age Threatens Your Future and What You Can Do About It, by
Robert Kamm. In his book, Kamm notes that Americans are working an average
of six weeks to three months more per year than they did just a decade
ago. Additionally, more than 70% of people in offices work weekends and
more than 70% of American parents feel they don't spend enough time with
their kids. Kamm says that the Superman Syndrome is characterized by an
inability or unwillingness to throw the off-switch…whether on a cell
phone, the computer, or in our own brains. We are the most distracted
generation in the history of the human race. And distracted people make
for distracted and unavailable parents perhaps one of the biggest threats
our growing generation faces in the 21st Century.
Clients often come to me feeling overwhelmed. They want more control and
balance in their lives. I explain that the control comes from within.
Shedding the Superman cape is the first step! I tell my clients that they
must be willing to bypass the external distractions and demands on their
time, look inside to their own values and priorities, and then make
choices so their focus and activities match these values and priorities.
For example, if you truly value your own health and your family, but you
are working too many hours to take care of yourself or to be home when
your family is still awake, then you've lost control of your life.
Kamm notes that the commitment to slow down and focus on things in life
that really matter must be made at the corporate as well as the individual
level. He states that "the Superman Syndrome is a dangerous workplace
success formula that forces men and women to leap tall buildings and
outrun speeding bullets at the expense of personal lives, families,
children and even business
productivity. This represents a major hypocrisy implicit in nearly every
boardroom in America: The belief that we should be accountable to work but
not to our families."
This begs the question, "What does it matter if you win the rat
race?" You're still a rat!
Change -- even good change -- is stressful for most people. And today, the
speed of change is doubling exponentially every 18 months. The deafening
roar of change is the reason that 70% of illness is due to stress, and the
top six leading causes of death for American adults are stress related. It
is not change itself -- but our inability to adapt to change that creates
the rub for most of us. We are creatures of habit, and those old patterns
are hard to change, even when they no longer serve us well. Health care
professionals note that we are so addicted to our fast-paced lives that it
often takes a life-threatening crisis such as a heart attack or cancer to
slow us down. Making the changes necessary to leave the fast lane behind
is not quick, and for most it is not
easy. That's why practices such as yoga, meditation, and working with a
life coach have become so popular.
Time to Graduate: Get a Life!
As we approach the time of year to celebrate graduations, I find it
particularly fitting to share excerpts from a commencement address made by
Anna Quindlen. As she began her speech to the graduating class of
Villanova University in Pennsylvania, this novelist told the audience,
"My work is human nature. Real life is all I know. Don't ever confuse
the two, your life and your work. The second is only part of the
first."
Quindlen went on to share some important life lessons that all 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 e-mail. 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 Steiger
If you struggle to "get a life," here are some concrete action
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 had a terminal
illness, what would you want to do with the time you had left?)
* Write down your
response.
* What is holding you back from doing this now? Do you choose to wait for
a
terminal illness to come along before you make time for what you love
most?
* Get your calendar out and schedule time to do some of the things you
wrote
down.
Action Idea #2 - Identify your values.
*Jot down the names of 10-20 people whom you admire. They do not need to
be living, and you may have never met them or known them personally.
* After you've completed your list, write down the qualities that you
admire in each person you listed. For example, if I listed Mother *
Teresa, I might describe these qualities: compassionate, generous,
unconditional love, lived with meaningful purpose. The qualities that you
admire in others are YOUR values.
* How do you honor your values regularly? What is getting in the way of
you
honoring your values?
* Pick at least one value that you choose to honor in the coming week. How
will you honor it? If you will honor it in the form of an activity, be
specific about what the activity is and schedule time on your calendar to
make it happen.
Action Idea #3 - Identify your priorities and passions.
* Pretend that you are attending your 100th birthday party and your
closest friends and relatives have gathered to honor you. What would you
want them to say about you? What would represent a life well lived with no
regrets?
* What matters most to you? What are you most passionate about? Write it
down.
* What one thing could you do, that if you did regularly, would make the
biggest difference in your personal life? For your professional life?
* Get out your calendar and begin planning to do these things regularly.
Visit http://www.orgcoach.net/newsletter/valueoftime.html
to see an interesting perspective on the Value of Time.
Kathy Paauw, a certified business/personal coach and
organizing/productivity consultant, specializes in helping busy
executives, professionals, and entrepreneurs de-clutter their schedules,
spaces and minds. Contact her at orgcoach@gte.net
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