The Executive For Whom Success Was Not Enough

 

This was an executive with a high post in the financial sector. He contacted me due to an overall unease with his life. He wanted me to help him achieve bliss. He said that if bliss meant more than happiness, then this is what he wanted.

This was somewhat of an unusual request. Many of the corporate types do, in fact, suffer horribly stressful lives with little peace. However, they typically contact me in search of greater success. This gentleman had all the success he wanted, but he found that it wasn’t giving him the sort of personal satisfaction that he thought it would.

We spent several hours on the telephone over a period of a few months.

I began to dissect things with him. He did most of the talking, as is virtually always the case with clients. And I spent my time listening to the words that were spoken and the meanings that were not. I listened to what he freely revealed and I waited for what I hoped he would eventually reveal.

There is something I have learned in working with human beings. They reveal information in a hierarchical fashion. The information that they reveal first is the information that is most obvious. And depending upon how I respond, they filter and modify the release of the most critical information in accordance with their level of trust.

So I listened as he played this ever so subtle game. He did not do it intentionally. In essence, this game is an outward manifestation of his inner conflict with his mind. He wishes to reveal the information but his mind wishes to keep it a secret. And this internal conflict continues for some time and to varying degrees depending upon the individual and the nature of his situation.

So I mostly listened and occasionally spoke. This went on for about five weeks.

And in that fifth week, at about 9:30 pm, he said something that put a smile on my face.

He said, “To tell you the truth, doc, I feel like my success is choking me.”

This was new. We had suddenly broken new ground. We had forged a new path.

“How?” I asked him.

He said, “It’s sort of put me in this ‘Success Box’ and I don’t feel comfortable there. Wherever I go, I’m not seen as myself. I’m not seen as a human being. I’m seen as a success. Sometimes I hate my success, because I feel like I’m much more than that. When everyone looks at me, they see success. No one ever sees ME.”

We were getting close, but he was still holding out on me. His mind was not yet ready to let him reveal the one truth. Either because he did not realize it, or because he simply wasn’t ready to reveal it.

So I probed him on the matter. Ever so delicately.

And at the end of the 8th week, he finally said it. “Doc,” he said. “I think maybe it’s time I let go of this image of myself.”

He finally realized that it was not EVERYONE ELSE that had put him in the ‘success box.’ It was HIM. This was the identity that he carried around. And while it served him well in his professional life, it was smothering him in his personal life.

He was so completely subordinate to this image of himself that he could not pry himself free of it.

Why?

Because if he was not “a success” then who would he be? That was too frightening a question to entertain. So he clinged to this image.

The greatest thing that he learned was that if he replaced this image of himself with another image, he would eventually become a slave to that image.

And, thus, the only way out was to be free of all images. In being free of his images he could be free to explore his native, unconditioned self.

I received a call from him a few months later.

He said that he hadn’t felt this sort of freedom since he was fourteen years old.

Dr. Gupta travels the world working with True Seekers. His clientele consists of professional athletes, executives, and celebrities. He helps them become The God Of Their Own Life.

Kapil@KapilGuptaMD.com