Enough Is Enough

To Redesign Your Life, Reckon with Your Death

How do so many intelligent and insightful people allow their lives to get so far out of whack? By failing to ask themselves the kinds of questions that they routinely ask their colleagues and companions: Why do you work? What gives you pleasure? Most people, Baker says, are open and honest about life -- until they need to be open and honest with themselves. Introspection takes too much effort and too much courage. That's why he asks his visitors to engage in what sounds like a grim exercise: Think about your life as if you were on your deathbed. People on their deathbeds look back on life with a special perspective, Baker argues. They discard trivia and focus on what matters most: on relationships and on what Baker calls "defining moments" -- those critical choices that lead us down one path or another. "It's hard to take time in the middle of a busy life just to think about what we have done and what we want to achieve," he says. "We have to find new ways to impose time-outs."

The need for a time-out is what brought Jaynie Studenmund to Canyon Ranch. Studenmund, now 45, who lives in La Canada, California, has worked for three different financial companies in the past five years -- most recently, for H.F. Ahmanson, a big California S&L. One after another, each company was acquired -- one of them in a hostile takeover. "Three mergers in three years," she says, as if she still can hardly believe it.

At each institution, Studenmund served as the executive vice president of retail banking and as a member of the company's management committee. Those three years amounted to the most stressful time in her entire career, and while she relished the challenges that came her way, she also recognized the compromises that she had to make. After all, she wasn't just a high-powered bank officer -- she was also a wife and a mother. After putting her two young children to bed, she would work late into the night. She got by on four or five hours of sleep. She exercised, but she often skipped meals. In the middle of one merger, she worked 10 consecutive 18-hour days. When her son learned about the third takeover, he sighed, "Oh, no, Mommy, not again."

Colleagues had urged her to take time off, but she had always been too driven to let herself do so -- until now. She's on sabbatical to recuperate, to reassess her life, and to map out her next move. At Canyon Ranch, Studenmund listens to a doctor describe the physiological effects of her recent lifestyle -- how, for example, depriving the body of eight hours of sleep adversely affects mood and memory. She hears a fitness trainer explain that running -- a longtime habit of hers -- isn't a well-rounded form of exercise. And she gets the results of a comprehensive blood test: Her cholesterol level is on the high side.

All of this comes as a real eye-opener. While serving the needs of both work and home, she has neglected herself. "I'm a very driven person, so you have to hit me over the head with a two-by-four to get my attention," she says. "They do that here, but in a nurturing way. I know that the pattern I was living before wasn't sustainable, although it worked pretty well for a while."

Thanks to the golden parachutes that came with all of those mergers, she doesn't have to work. Still, she'd like to get back into the game of business -- on her terms. "I want to do something that I can feel passionate about, something that will let me make a major contribution," she says. "But having time for my family is vital. I want to work for people for whom that is also important."

Early in the week, Baker asks his guests, "What's your vision? What are your goals?" Many of them don't even know what their goals are. Some get swept up in a lucrative career and never pause to find true north on their inner compass. Others simply adopt someone else's vision. Still others have achieved one set of goals and are at a loss as to what to do next. Many successful people, says Baker, set career goals in their twenties and thirties, and when they reach those goals in their forties or fifties -- or, these days, even sooner -- they're disappointed by the view from the top. Baker calls this the Peggy Lee Syndrome: "Is That All There Is?"

When a successful career feels empty, it's often because the price of success has been too high. Instead of having a rich family life and a supportive circle of friends, successful people have only colleagues and clients. "Work becomes your habit," Baker says. "You don't develop outside interests, so you don't have anywhere else to go. You get all of your accolades, and you do all of your socializing, in that venue." That's an alluring trap, because the extra effort can pay off in the form of raises and promotions -- which only reinforce the grind.