Do you now when to stop? It’s a loaded question, allow me to frame it so you can understand what I mean.
At dinner recently, my friend Amy G. who is EVP Head of Programming at HBO (there are other elements to her title way to long to lay out here), was asked by a Gen Z member at the table: “Did you always have this in your goals, to be where you are today?” And Amy answered “If I had hardcoded my goal when I was younger, I would have aimed way too low. Where I am today is nothing I could have envisioned back then.”
I believe in this fully. The path does unfold, even when it sometimes appears deceptively as a cliff’s edge. So this begs the question: if you’re headed towards destination unknown, how do you know when you’ve arrived? And even more importantly, how do you know if the pursuit of more will unravel the very success (however you define it) that you were seeking?
The passage below from Fitzgerald’s Babylon Revisited hits home. It’s from a conversation between Paul (a barman serving drinks) and the protagonist Charlie:
Paul: “I heard that you lost a lot in the crash (the ‘29 stock market) Charlie: “I did,” and he added grimly, “but I lost everything I wanted in the boom.”
If you haven’t built, by your own standards, a solid measuring stick to determine what success means to you, then you may miss it when it happens. And even more importantly, you won’t have the tools to help you keep it when it does.
I wrote Almost Reckless because this almost happened to me. I was deeply discontent, even when everything about my “successful” business, about my life, should have consoled me. The last few years have given me an opportunity to engage with, interview, and understand the experiences of many who’ve faced the same dilemma. People at the “top of their game” by any objective standards. I found my way out, I found my contentment. I also found a way to distill it to a few principles and practices that anyone - whether you’re working your way through school, raising kids you hope will succeed in this world, and/or navigating the politics of a Fortune 100 company - can employ. And now that I have proof of concept, I wanted to share it with as many people as possible.
Ok, if you are like me, sometimes you get excited about something that is in the near future, but then go on about your and forget the very thing that got you so pumped up. So you can preorder the book here: ORDER HERE . It’s really good, I promise.
Placed my order ( finally🙃).