We dream about it. We visualize it. We hire coaches to help us achieve it. We jeer at the soap opera villain who sells his grandmother to get it. We stand around the water cooler and shake our heads at the lives of those who have it, and destroy it.

This time on Thinking With Somebody Else’s Head, some perspective on success.

I’m a North American. It would be impossible not to be affected by the blinders-on-full-sheets-to-the-wind-hell-bent-for-leather single mindedness of the North American culture in its focus on achieving the promised land that is the state of success.

We treat the subject with the reverence and hushed tones that mystics from former times reserved for the awe of creation and poets for the sweet pains of love.

But perhaps, in our strivings for material success, we’ve lost something. It was Canadian writer, Mordecai Richler, who wrote one of the great stories on that very theme in The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz. And if you haven’t seen the great 1974 movie with Richard Dreyfuss, you should check it out for a reminder of the perils to our souls of an unrelenting quest to fulfill me, me, me.

Susan Berkley is a very successful entrepreneur. She has her own company – The Great Voice Company – she’s a highly sought after voice whose clients include AT&T, she’s a trainer and a writer. She’s going to help us get a little closer to understanding success and why it’s often so elusive, today on Thinking With Somebody Else’s Head.

Click here to listen to this episode.

Tags: