100 Business Days Out: Day 51 - Craned Neck Syndrome

Yesterday morning I had breakfast with a friend who is a senior executive for a well-known company. A woman I respect, admire and think very highly of. As we were talking about her and how things are going in her job, she described someone who she works with that I could identify with and in the course of the conversation I learned something about myself. The person she described is a person who came from a humble and modest childhood and who through perseverance, tenacity and some luck was able to break out his upbringing both geographically and socioeconomically. By all the standards he was raised with, he had "made it". And as he continued to succeed he never forgot his roots and his upbringing and would draw on this reservoir of experience for lessons in his current business challenges, etc. All that sounds good and in many ways it is a great strength. But as she talked more, she also described a side where this person led from a sense of insecurity and sometimes fear that all that he had achieved could be taken away from him in an instant. She said it was like sometimes he worried that he would be "found out" and that someone would realize that he didn't have the pedigree or blue-blood to be in the position he was in so he was always looking over his shoulder to see if someone was going to "find him out". On the surface, that looks irrational doesn't it? Well, for me the the example was relevant and I suspect there are more of out there who feel this way than we let on. As she spoke about this person, I saw myself in the story. There are many similarities in the background and I think at the core of this is when you are in a place where you have attained things in life that you feel "lucky and blessed" to have attained, there is always this sense that it could be ripped out from under you at the blink of an eye and with that comes an internal pressure and uncertainty. Some of that has to be a lack of self-confidence, but I don't think that is all of it. I see those older people who can remember the Great Depression. They think about money differently. The savings account they have is not safe. The food in the cupboard is not a sure thing. The roof over their house is only temporary. I always thought what I tough way to live. And, here I sit, being much the same with how I think. It is the blessing and the curse of having seen another side of life. A craned neck looking over your shoulder is a tough way to go through life. What those of us with that syndrome need is a good chiropractor who straightens us out and reminds us that we don't have to continue to prove ourselves to others to find our success. And we don't have to worry about the comparison mark of who we are being where we are from, our education, or where we began. Our success comes from looking straight ahead and running the race at our own pace and not looking left..right...or most importantly, not looking over our shoulders.