Capacity, Entrepreneurial Hustle & The Icarus Effect
Like the mythical Icarus, there are serious risks of flying too high & too fast
We can no longer deny we are energetic beings that inhabit a bio-electric vessel
Performing beyond our capacity or continuously pushing ourselves beyond balanced energetic states has led to the burnout epidemic
With this scientific truth, consider that the recent burnout epidemic is premised on an out-moded concept of "entrepreneurial hustle" or "powering thru" in the business culture
Like the Tale of Icarus: Icarus' father creates wings for him to fly, and beforehand, Icarus' father warns him first of complacency and then of HUBRIS, asking that he fly neither too low nor too high, so the sea's dampness would not clog his wings nor the sun's heat melt them
Icarus ignored his father's instructions not to fly too close to the sun; when the wax in his wings melted he tumbled out of the sky and fell into the sea where he drowned, sparking the idiom "don't fly too close to the sun"
For example, a recently deceased and very successful cardio-vascular surgeon client despite a short-lived career, burned out to an irreparable point leading to a downward spiral of his demise -- his resistance to outside intervention, furthered his isolation (it can be lonely at the top) & accelerated his burnout to the point of becoming
I myself flew relatively too high & too fast in my early legal & dispute resolution career launches, catching my dire symptoms in time before the burnout became irreversible
Similarly, a powerful & internationally successful Executive MasterMind Chair ($50K entry for his group) shared with me that he drank the most during his biggest business boon, exemplifying that we often mask our burnout symptoms through dangerous coping mechanisms
This got me reflecting on how I had coped with my success & related capacity issues?
Was the strenuous effort & toughening up method of achieving success inefficient & dangerous over long-term?
Is there another way that we've overlooked in our business / executive / leadership space to be successful sustainably & mindfully?
In particular, it appears that many of our closely held beliefs about success are unsustainable or premised on unhealthy beliefs about capacity
For instance, when I befriended a world-renowned breath-work expert, he jokingly mentioned, "Im not a shaman, Im a showman....it's all in the breath" -- everything boils down to breath for optimal energy