Expert Perspective

Work/Life: Hillary and Steroids

BY Tom Stern | 06-06-2008 | 12:52 AM

This article is written by a member of our expert contributor community.

Okay, I admit the headline on today’s entry could fall under the category of “bait and switch.” See, I don’t really want to write about Hillary Clinton’s recent defeat at the polls, but there’s so much news about it I figured I would put her name in the subject line as a cheap marketing strategy. Marketing strategies get talked about a lot on the FC site, so it seemed to be worth trying one of my own. And, if you’ve got this far, then perhaps it worked, and you are experiencing some curiosity about what Hillary has to do with steroids.
Well, nothing of course. I already told you it was an unabashed bit of hype. However, when I get it into my head that I just don’t feel like writing about an overexposed topic like the presidential campaign, my search for interesting things that might be slightly under the radar intensifies. And so it is that I came across a low-budget documentary that just got released called “Bigger, Stronger, Faster.” It’s an examination of steroid use in sports and body-building (the filmmaker uses his own brothers as subjects, who used the drugs to live up to childhood heroes like Hulk Hogan). In it, an interviewee asks the audience to consider whether or not they would use an illegal and potentially dangerous drug…if it meant that they could support their family.
The question is fascinating, because it can so easily be applied, metaphorically, to anything we do to try and increase our performance and competitiveness out there in the dog east dog world. The pressure to be “bigger, stronger, faster” is not confined to the world of sports. I don’t take steroids myself (one look at me and it’s painfully apparent), but I can see that, in the effort to give my family a half-decent lifestyle, I’ve been taking metaphorical steroids for years. Work addiction, negotiations, multi-tasking, and heck, even coffee are all things I inject into my system in order to keep up with the pace of doing business. And I often don’t see how these things are impacting me until I’m so bulked up on overachieving that I can hardly move. And it was all so I could hit one out of the park, every single time. And goodness knows what a presidential candidate has to go through to succeed. (Hey, I brought it back to Hillary after all.)
Chris Bell, the director of “Bigger, Stronger, Faster,” said he used his brothers to tackle the subject of steroid use because he wanted to give an overexposed subject a more personal slant. So, work/life balance seekers, take note: once again, involving the family proves a very wise decision.