"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!

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."

Special Offer If you're interested in living a life that's different than the one you're living now, working with a coach might be just what you need to move you forward in the direction you want to go. Contact me and we'll set up a time to talk. The first call is free and you are under no obligation to continue. After that, you can decide if coaching is what you really need, and if I am the right coach for you. If I am, we can talk about what our working together will look like. If I'm not, I'll refer you to a trusted colleague who might be a better fit. We get what we settle for. It's never too late -- or too early -- to settle for more. When you are ready to settle for more -- professionally or personally -- click here to see if you qualify for a complimentary coaching session. Click here to see what my clients have to say about coaching with me. Read the December 2000 Working Woman magazine article about Kathy and her client. Click here to view Q&A about coaching.

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