When Breakdown Leads to a Breakthrough

This book excerpt is a story from a chapter titled "THE RISE (AND IRONY) OF THE SELF-AWARENESS ERA?" of my award winning book "IN/ACTION: Rethinking the Path to Results", available to buy online where you buy books. You can read more about me?here?and more about the book?here.

Renée Dineen is, in her words, a “recovering workaholic and doing addict.” In February 2020, she shared her story through a TEDx Talk “Authentic Inaction—Undoing the Doing in a Do-Crazy World,” in which she chronicled her “doing addiction” and a health scare that served as a wakeup call. In 2015, following this health scare, she quit the major source of her action addiction, her high-paying executive job in biotech, cold turkey.

In calling it an addiction, her choice of words was interesting. She told me, “I called it an addiction because my ‘doing life’ had me. I did not have it. ‘Doing addicts’ are honored and encouraged. It is a behavior that is even expected, an identity rooted in our culture. There’s this affirmation that comes through that addiction, as opposed to the shaming that comes with other addictions. This is what also keeps it in place.” Her phrasing must have struck a chord. Her TEDx Talk is at nearly 600,000 views.

A couple of years before quitting, she was enjoying one of her highs by leading a major organizational transformation at a biotech firm. While that was going on, she was approached by a senior executive who wanted her to take the lead on another transformation in his organization. She felt tempted and pressured at the same time. The other transformation was bigger, impacting 14,000 people, and had more visibility. She had her doubts and misgivings; the previous transformation wasn’t complete and the why for this new opportunity wasn’t clear. But the vice president (VP) who approached her was persuasive. Dineen agreed to transition.

What followed was a grueling eighteen-month period with international travel every six weeks, long hours, and canceled family holidays. In the meantime, the team she left behind became leaderless and the transformation faltered.

After about a year and a half, before the new initiative was completed, the VP retired. Since this transformation was his baby, it became orphaned and petered out. “I didn’t get to finish either transformation,” says Dineen with regret.

By then she had also developed severe health symptoms: tremors and stutters. Her doctors thought she had MS (multiple sclerosis, a disease of the brain and spinal cord) but tests and scans came back negative. This was her wakeup call.

“It was at that point I knew that my own ‘undoing’ would require me to make some significant life changes. Others may not require this level of change, but I did. I needed to completely shift the flow of my day-to-day life and commit myself to coming into greater alignment with who I was and what I really wanted to do.” She quit.

Today, Dineen is an author, motivational speaker, and a leadership and lifestyle coach. Perhaps Dineen needed a major breakdown to reach her ultimate breakthrough. Hopefully, the rest of us don’t wait until we get that kind of wakeup call.

This story is a reminder that action addiction could become a real thing for each of us; the high we get from doing and outcomes makes us want to chase more action for the next high, much like other forms of better understood addictions.

The more ambitious and successful we are, the more we thrive on action. Even when we choose a break, we tend to make action-filled choices. As you consider your life, on the spectrum of choices made by Jenzsch and Dineen, where would you like to see yourself? Where are you headed?

How do we avoid getting to the point of burnout? Parts two and three of this book address how the pursuit of results turns into a mindless pursuit of action and how we can overcome some of the addiction builders. Here, we will explore one mitigating solution that is popular but, in my mind, yet to be fully utilized.?

If you enjoyed this excerpt, share it with your network! I'd love to hear from you, please drop a line if any of this resonates with you. You can also buy the book at?Amazon,?Barnes and Noble?or wherever you buy books online.