Love addiction is defined as a compulsive, chronic craving and pursuit of romantic love in an effort to get your sense of security and worth from another person.
It’s when we act out a misguided search for some kind of love at any price. Allowing the neurotic fantasy script inside our heads to be the arbiter of our reality.
It’s not clinically recognized as a mental disorder or addiction by the psychological powers that be, but that doesn’t make it any less harmful. Ask anyone who’s ever been in a relationship where they were the only one in love. It sucks.
Woody was right when he observed that unrequited love kills more people each year that tuberculosis.
And so, consider the following thought experiment.
Do you personify love addiction mindsets and behaviors in your career?
Because whether you’re running your own company, searching for a new job or gainfully employed by an organization, your own maladaptive passion related behaviors could cause significant mental and emotional distress.
For all parties involved. Not only you, but also the prospects, clients and colleagues to whom you have become addicted.
Speaking from my own experience as an entrepreneur and employee and job seeker, I’ve seen firsthand the dangers of becoming trapped in a spiral of obsession, locked away in my closet of career fantasies. It’s bad times.
The following questions are meant to be a simple guideline to help business professionals start a meaningful conversation about love addiction.
Will you chase after prospective clients who have consistently rejected you and desperately try to change their minds?
Do you become so attracted to a new business opportunity that you ignore all the warning signs that the project is not good for you?
Will you allow a client to keep kicking you in the balls, but still never get the point?
If courting a prospective customer, do you quickly become clingy and smothering, persisting until the people either hire you or die?
Will you become preoccupied, obsessed and attached to what every new career opportunity could mean for you?
Do you dream that if some company only discovered just how special and talented you are, you would be happy for the rest of your life?
Have you ever tried to talk yourself into doing business with someone you weren’t particularly fond of because you needed the work right now?
Have you ever lost a job and believed that you could not go on living without the object of your love addiction?
Have you convinced yourself that there’s just one special client or company in the world that you can be truly have a rewarding career with?
Do you think you are less of a real person or somehow incomplete without a full work plate?
Remember, there’s no right answer and there’s no winning score. The purpose of this thought experiment is to start a conversation with yourself about your potentially maladaptive behaviors.
Because as my therapist once reminded me, if you’re still picking up your ex at the airport six years after she broke your heart, you might have some work to do.
LET ME ASK YA THIS...
When will you have achieved enough professionally to be happy with who you are?
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Scott Ginsberg
That Guy with the Nametag
Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.
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