Doctor Mike

Love is earned.

From the people who matter the most, your love is earned.

And so that gets into this whole, the idea of you're not a human being, you're a human doing.

This leads, if they're very gifted, into this success addiction, where probably they get more dopamine from doing something that's extraordinary and getting the rewards, getting that sense of being admired, that sense of affirmation from people.

just like other people do when they use drugs and alcohol or certain rewarding behaviors.

And that becomes pathological.

That turns into success addiction, a secondary manifestation of which is workaholism.

So when I'm meeting somebody my own age, I'm in my early 60s, I meet somebody my age, they're like,

I can't stop, I can't stop.

I work 80 hours a week and my employees, they don't love me, they're afraid of me and I'm alienating my family.

My wife and I are roommates.

I have a cordial relationship with my children.

I don't even love my job, but I can't stop.

That's classic workaholic behavior.

I dig into the success addiction that's behind that, the self-objectification, the fear of failure that comes along.

And there's almost always a kind of insanity behind that.

There's a craziness, the sort of same kind of pathology as I would see with somebody who abuses drugs or alcohol.

Yeah, I mean, that's a different kind of problem that we see.

But I would, in a way, the people who are just you being you, they tend to be happier than people who are not anything unless they're winning.

Now, to be sure, Mike, if it weren't for the pathological success addicts, we'd be living in caves.