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For all intents and purposes, I'm a success! People think I've got it made. I don't know how many times this past year someone has told me I look and sound `just terrific'. But how can someone who looks so good, feel so bad? On the inside, I often waver between depression, feeling totally out of control, and feeling like I'm going to explode because I'm so full of pent-up emotions - confusion, anger, betrayal. I'm not productive at work. I don't feel particularly close to my wife."
This personal outburst expressed by a man in senior management position, captures a picture of restlessness and anxiety in mid-life among successful careerists. The occurrence of career success and personal failure has been identified as a phenomenon, or affliction as it may seem to those experiencing it, describing a set of conditions and experiences peculiar to certain individuals in their mid-life years (O'Neil, 2004). More generally, career success and personal failure refers to a situation where an individual has attained an unquestionable level of success according to the criteria set within the society (high occupational status, prestige, power and responsibility, substantial income, relative material wealth, status in the community), but this success is to the detriment of personal fulfillment (Korman & Korman, 1980). Our objective here is to identify the causes of spiraling career success along with degrading personal life experiences with a view to help achieve a balance in the two extremities of life. |
