Helpful or Harmful?

Your passion for your career can sabotage your attempts to succeed. When you go from feeling energized, excited and in control of your work to feeling an overwhelming compulsion to achieve and produce, you’ve tipped from helpful harmonious passion into harmful obsessive passion .

Luckily, you can rediscover a life of harmonious passion by intentionally changing your behavior and by replacing harmful thought patterns with helpful ones. Here are common thoughts related to obsessive passion and my suggestions on how to modify them:

FLAWED EVALUATION OF WORTH

Harmful: I am valuable because of what I achieve, produce or have.Helpful: I am valuable because of who I am, not what I do or own.

Harmful: Perfect is the only option. Less than perfect is failure.Helpful: Perfection is an ideal that cannot exist in an imperfect world.

SENSE OF OVER-RESPONSIBILITY

Harmful: If everything doesn’t go according to plan, it’s my fault. I should have planned more, done more, been more.Helpful: Activities rarely go exactly according to plan. I take responsibility for the areas within my control but release responsibility for those outside of my control, including unforeseen circumstances and others’ emotional responses.

Harmful: I can rest without guilt only when all the work is done. If I stop any sooner, I am lazy, selfish and irresponsible.Helpful: There will always be more work to do. By choosing to rest at reasonable intervals, I increase my productivity, accomplish more, enjoy life and stop feeling resentful toward those who take breaks.

Harmful: I’ll get enough sleep, eat well, exercise and do activities I enjoy only when everyone else has their needs met.Helpful: It’s good for me to be considerate of others’ needs, but I also have a legitimate need for proper self-care.

INSECURITY IN RELATIONSHIPS

Harmful: I’m bad at forming and maintaining relationships, so why should I try to have a life outside of work?Helpful: I can learn how to form and maintain better relationships. I may not always meet everyone’s expectations, but I have a better chance of success when I try.

Harmful: I feel in control at work because certain actions predictably produce specific results. It’s too much of a risk to venture into areas where I don’t always know what to do.Helpful: I can choose to stay in a place of security and isolation, or I can choose to open my life up to others. I may experience some loss of control, but ultimately I create the possibility of great joy.

If you think you might have fallen into the trap of obsessive passion, go through the list and ask yourself: Do I recognize myself in any of the harmful thought patterns? If the answer is “yes,” try incorporating more helpful thoughts into your life. Writing them down in a journal, repeating them aloud while meditating or keeping a list of them visible at your desk can all help return to a state of harmonious passion.

Copyright 2019 Harvard Business School Publishing Corp. Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate.