Success and a Wonderful Life

by Rosalinda O'Neill

You work hard to be successful for yourself, your family, and your clients. Your business and professional practice requires more of you than ever to keep being successful. So do your loved ones, your clients, and your aging body. Do you have a life you enjoy and look forward to each day? How about the people you work with: clients, colleagues, and staff? Are you respected and supported by your partners, direct reports, and staff? Is your work something you like doing?

You must change if you:

• Are less productive as you find yourself overcommitted, not supported, or sabotaged.
• Often get frustrated or angry instead of just saying what you require or don’t like.
• Have shortness of breath, body pain, sleeplessness, or frequently feel miserable.

Approach and Response Management (ARM™) Strategy: Success in everything in life is achieved through a successful approach and response strategy. A successful approach and response management strategy helps you manage stressful situations as well as “arm” yourself better for the stress of everyday life. Apply that to your lifebalance, and you will be happier and more successful, even when disaster and problems occur.

Create your improved approach and response management (ARM) strategy as you:

• Decide what your goals are and what price you are willing to pay to have them.
• Make simple changes right away. For example, do not always answer your phones and turn them off at times, including at home.
• Realistically schedule your work and home life. Walk and engage in other relaxing activities.

As you develop your improved strategy, you will not stop being caring and responsible towards your personal or professional commitments. You will be caring and responsible to yourself, and take action to create a balanced life you enjoy living, supported by work you are proud to do.

Those that really care about you want you more than your financial and professional success. Your daughters and sons want you, not your photos. My fabulous, “healthy,” 44-year old MD brother, Patrick, thought he could do it all. Requests for him to slow down fell on deaf ears. Patrick died suddenly in his sleep in October 2003. He, and his devastated wife and daughters, would love a second chance.

Successful people are inclined to overload themselves. A new book to help you is Younger Next Year: A Guide to Living Like 50 Until You’re 80 and Beyond, by Chris Crowley and Henry S. Lodge, M.D.

Client examples of creating an approach and response strategy

1. A “rainmaker” was yelling at any staff member or attorney associate who didn’t satisfy his expectations. His clients loved him. The firm loved the revenues he generated. We first identified the liabilities he was creating for everyone, including himself. Soon, his approach and response to work stressors changed. He stopped yelling when frustrated and confronted problem situations more constructively. He learned to handle stressors without being destructive to others or himself. He is respected in the firm, and enjoys his work and personal life more. His health improved as his response to stress changed.
2. A successful executive had heart palpitations so severe she thought she would die, and so did her business associates, her husband, and all her loved ones. When doctors ruled out a physical problem she came to me. She was so afraid she would pass out in the presence of her young children while no one else was around that she had stopped exercising on her treadmill. We immediately identified her severe stressors at work and home. We developed ways to change her approach and response to home and business expectations and practices, and still succeed. She quickly changed, is no longer afraid for her health, and enjoys her life as never before. Your success as a human being occurs as you:

• Daily develop an approach and response strategy to living a successful life in all you do.
• Understand and value yourself, and what is important to you in this life. Update it now.
• Learn to stand up for yourself graciously and create action plans to control what you can.
• Seize opportunities to do good work without harming yourself or others in the process.
• Be honest with yourself and all your life’s key members. Spell out expectations clearly, with specific examples and peaceful solutions to conflicts. Don’t agree if you disagree.
• Approach and respond to death, disaster, and other tragedies with the same focus and truth.

Your body is your most important physical friend to carry you through this life. Give it the care and respect it requires, and it will last longer. When your emotions or body become painfully stressed, stop and listen. Explore the corrective action available. Don’t passively accept the path of misery. It is not worth the price. Have your success and a wonderful life, with all the trimmings. It can be great.

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