Obstacles to Grace I: Sub-Optimizing

Most people forget their youthful experience of greatness and purpose or at least put it aside somewhere deep in their memory. It happens to all of us: We sub-optimize.

By sub-optimizing I mean that we may have an experience of the highest goal in our lives, but we quickly pull back to the lesser goals that society calls success. We often get frozen in our accomplishments, which may be great, but not the highest or optimal that we can attain. In other words, we settle; we sub-optimize.

In every moment we have a choice: Will we act from our highest goal or recede to something less? For instance, sometimes in meetings I speak my truth no matter what the consequences for me. On other occasions I pull back to a comfortable silence and miss chances to make a real contribution. When the latter occurs, I always feel sad, but I try to learn from it.

Sometimes we keep doing the same thing that brought us success in society’s terms. When this happens early in a career, I call it the tragedy of early success. Some people—athletes, entertainers, entrepreneurs, artists, writers, and scientists, for example—have tremendous success early in their careers. The media lionize them, and these initially successful people keep trying to do the same thing over again. But they can never get beyond that early success. They develop no further and sub-optimize their lives. It is something that can happen to all of us.