Meredith Willson, The Music Man
I’d just finished speaking to a group of young entrepreneurs.
Chatting with enthusiastic attendees as they filtered out of the room, I saw a young woman approach. She introduced herself as Stephanie and shared a challenge that she was facing.
“I’m stressed out all the time. I’m not sure what the trigger is, but all day, and every day, I feel the entire weight of the world resting on my shoulders.” She looked away with a pained expression before adding: “I think it’s beginning to suffocate me.”
I asked Stephanie to tell me a bit more. She began to describe her life, how her day starts early, with meetings at 7:15 A.M. She normally packs a lunch because there’s rarely more than twenty minutes to eat. With additional meetings that fill her afternoon schedule, on good days she gets home around 6:00 P.M., but several days a week the meetings occupy her until eight. After getting home, she has a quick dinner by herself (because her family already ate), tackles a couple more hours of work, and makes a list of things she needs to get done the next day. After a quick check of social media, she falls into bed around midnight.
I got exhausted just hearing her describe it all! No wonder she was feeling stressed and suffocated.
Yet there is a detail I left out.
The meetings Stephanie had in the afternoons and evenings weren’t budget meetings or sales calls, but extracurricular activities and practices.
The work she did after dinner wasn’t data analysis for an IT firm, but homework for her classes.
This woman wasn’t an executive climbing a corporate ladder, but a fifteen-year-old sophomore in high school with her eyes focused on the very first rung.
As we chatted more about why she was so busy, Stephanie told me that she participated in eight different clubs in addition to playing two sports.
I asked her if she liked the activities she participated in.
“No, not really.”
“So why are you doing all of this?” I asked.
“Because I want to get into a good college. With any luck, something Ivy League.”
“Why?” I asked.
She looked at me, confused. Why would I ask something with such an obvious answer?
“Well, the college I attend will impact my career opportunities.”
“So then what?” I asked.
She stared at me again, as if the answer was obvious.
I mean, isn’t life all about securing a highly paid job from a prestigious company, and fighting for promotions and raises and accolades until you’ve reached the top? Isn’t life about leaning in and crushing it at every turn, and winning the race?
Maybe.
But for many of us that marathon climb leads to burnout, disappointment, disillusionment, and exhaustion. Not to mention our lives can end like that gentleman I mentioned earlier, looking back on it despondently, wondering what it was all for.
Now, I’m not insinuating it isn’t valuable to be hired by a world-class organization and be paid well for work done. I get that grades matter, that extracurricular activities are beneficial, that higher education is important. Top-tier universities may very well provide greater access to exciting research and a remarkable network of peers.
It is worth noting, though, that many of the finest executives I meet credit their success to humble beginnings. Do you know how many CEOs from today’s Fortune 100 companies attended an Ivy League college?1 Just fourteen.
Stephanie, not yet old enough to drive, three years away from being able to vote, embodies a phenomenon that is spreading like wildfire through our culture today: We exchange the magnificent gift of youth for the misguided notion that it should be utilized to set us on the right academic and career path.
Hoping that the right college will lead to the perfect job.
And that the perfect job will lead to a perfect career.
And that the perfect career will lead to a perfect life.
But what if in exchanging what we actually love today for some vague notion of a perfect tomorrow, we forfeit the joy of living immersed in this moment and the chance to live In Awe each day?
Yes, we all need money to live, food to eat, shelter over our heads. We desire fulfilling, purposeful work where our talents and the world’s needs collide.
But if we are too future-focused, we forget how to live In Awe today.
And the trouble doesn’t start in high school.
Let’s examine what has happened to youth sports in the past couple of decades.
Youth sports have become a multibillion-dollar industry that is larger than the entirety of the National Football League.
What started as play in the backyard with neighborhood kids has been transformed into an industry that pushes four-year-olds into soccer clinics, seven-year-olds into traveling sports teams, and ten-year-olds into Tommy John surgery to repair ligament damage due to overuse.
Seated on foldout chairs on the sidelines, parents complain about the intense investment of their time and money. They grumble about the loss of lazy weekends and the sacrifice of family schedules.
But who signed their child up? Who wrote the checks for the $10,000 that many families pour into these sports annually?
We invest ridiculous amounts of time and resources in the hopes that our child won’t miss out on anything, and may even be one of the few who receive a scholarship for their hard-won skills.
Yet only 2 percent of high school athletes actually receive those coveted awards.
So we fill their schedules and free time with activities that wear them out and teach them that it’s all about where they are going. Today’s happiness is something we sacrifice for the future. But what will their future truly look like?
Though I didn’t meet Stephanie’s parents, I can imagine what their lives might entail.
Managing kids and two careers, they are in constant motion from sunup to sundown. It starts first thing in the morning when they get out of bed and check their phones for urgent messages before heading down to get lunches packed, breakfast fixed, and kids out the door.
At work, they shift continually from meetings to email to conference calls, barely having time to do the actual “work” that drove them to their industry of choice.
They pick up dinner while wrapping up one more conference call, get home and summon the kids who are home to the table, eat quickly, then send their kids off to homework and bed. They half-watch a show while still checking work email and social media, before falling exhausted into bed.
Now, that may be a bit of an exaggeration. But just a bit.
We have lost our ability to focus on the moment in front of us, giving it our all and getting the most out of it.
A few years ago, I took a vacation with my family. For ten days I stepped away from work completely, untethered myself from technology, and instead played on the beach with my children. One evening after dinner, I was playing a fierce card game of War with my oldest, Jack. He looked up at me, and said, “I sure like having you around.”
I stared at him in surprise. While yes, I travel a lot, and my days are spent at the office when I’m not traveling, what I think he actually meant is that for those ten days, I was giving him my undivided attention. I wasn’t looking at my laptop or cellphone. I wasn’t torn between all the other demands on my life. I was just there with him.
It jarred me awake.
What if success was not about getting someplace, but about experiencing each of the moments leading us there?
So. Let me ask you a different question.
Have you had enough?
Father Tom Hoar asked me that question when he joined me on my Live Inspired Podcast. He has committed his life to helping people recover from alcohol addiction. He believes their answer to this question is the key to determining whether they are truly ready to move in a new, life-giving direction.
Have you had enough?
If the answer is no, then Tom lovingly encourages them to come back at a later time. For those who answer yes, Tom begins walking with them down the path of recovery.
Because Father Tom only works with those who answer a resounding yes to his question, an astonishing 70 percent of his clients stay sober after they leave.
Their answer to that question is the key.
Tom knows the struggles of addiction intimately. Despite his calling, to cover up feelings of inadequacy, he found himself drawn to alcohol in moments when he was alone. One night, despite the fact that he was the on-call chaplain for the fire department, he began drinking yet again. And then the phone rang. He was needed down at the station to counsel a family. He responded to the call—and fielded questions about the smell of alcohol on his breath.
He went home that night, and stared at himself in the mirror.
He saw large bags under his eyes and disheveled hair. He felt his heart still racing and realized what he most desired would never be discovered at the bottom of an empty bottle.
He looked deeply into his own eyes and asked, “What the f*%# are you doing?”
And that was his last drink. He’d finally had enough.
Change happens when we’ve had enough of the life we’re living and long for something better.
When we realize the addiction we’re chained to isn’t satisfying the need.
There is a mighty addiction we universally wrestle with today.
We are addicted to the unimportant.
We are missing the miraculous to stay tethered to work, the media, social media, on devices that steal our attention away from the moment in front of us.
So have you had enough?
Of responding at all hours to requests that could most definitely be handled tomorrow?
Of giving your attention to the nitpicky tasks that can hijack our lives?
Of counting down to that vacation, when you’ll finally be able to relax and enjoy your family, only to find the demands of work have followed you there, too?
Of working so hard toward some future that you’ve forgotten how good you have it today?
If the answer is yes, then it’s time to get off the treadmill of the tyranny of the urgent. To learn what it means to take things one at a time.