What will they think of me?
I have
lived most of my life around men who are affluent and have experienced varying
degrees of business success. These last nine years, as director of the Center
for Executive Leadership, I have occupied the position of teacher, coach, and
counselor to many of them. In the process of doing my job, they have confirmed
a truth that I knew deep down to be true—an essential part of the mystique of
business success is to present a corporate happy face by projecting an image of
strength and competence to the outside world. As a result, many men feel a huge
pressure to maintain the image that they are bulletproof, that they can handle
any problem, any struggle, at any and all times.
However, I have discovered that in any
man’s life, true success cannot be sustained over any extended period of time
by denying the existence of internal struggles. Deeply personal issues such as
identity, fear, discontentment, and depression are issues all men must deal
with at some time in their lives, but generally they are at a loss as to what
they should do about them.
Excerpted from The True Measure of a Man: How Perceptions of Success, Achievement & Recognition Fail Men in Difficult Times by Richard E. Simmons III