Fischer-Wright told me about the insanity of organizations that require selfless devotion. I was a chief medical officer in a large healthcare system, and it was a badge of pride that you were at the office before 6:00 a.m. and you left later than 8:00 p.m. If you didn't adhere to that time schedule, it affected your performance review. Others felt you weren't serious about your career and the organization. Elon Musk fell into the trap of making his work his life and his life his work. He told the Times that he sometimes works 120 hours per week and takes Ambien to get to sleep. " You think this is an option," Musk said. "It is not." This is sheer nonsense. Imagine someone who creates a business and then sells it a few years later for $315 million. Wouldn't you call such a person successful? Arianna Huffington did just that, and she didn't destroy herself to do it. Her book, The Sleep Revolution: Transforming Your Life, One Night at a Time, discusses the crucial role that sleep plays in our lives. A more recent book, Dr. Matthew Walker's Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams provides additional evidence of the role that rest plays in our health. As a mid-level executive, Dr. Fischer-Wright refused to work the inhuman hours she was expected to put in. Now, as the CEO of a major organization, she will not ask the people who work for her to do this. "Our job is to develop people, support people, and grow people, not to leave them as shells of themselves," she says. Musk’s business is called the Boring Company. He would do well to live up to that name and be a little more boring by taking breaks from time to time. But even if he doesn’t, you can. Consider Keeping A Gratitude Journal This may seem more appropriate for leaders of a New Age spa rather than a global financial services organization, but everyone would benefit from keeping a daily gratitude journal. “It's really hard to be spinning out control if you take five minutes a day to think about the blessings you have,” notes Fischer-Wright. There is a developing body of scientific research that bears this out. Dr. Robert Emmons, author of Thanks! How Practicing Gratitude Can Make You Happier, has devoted his career as professor of psychology at University of California Davis to studying the effects of gratitude on both the recipient and the giver. The significance of gratitude lies in its ability...to enrich human life. Gratitude elevates, it energizes, it inspires, it transforms. People are moved, opened, and humbled through experiences and expressions of gratitude. Gratitude provides life with meaning by encapsulating life itself as a gift. Without gratitude, life can be lonely, depressing, impoverished. Emmons provides sound evidence to support these claims, and we ignore this at our peril. Surround Yourself With People Willing To Tell You The Truth As I discuss in my book, The Good Ones: Ten Crucial Qualities of High-Character Employees, Elvis Presley might not have died so young had the members of his inner circle told him, “Boss, you’re in trouble.” After Elvis’s divorce from Priscilla Presley in 1973, his drug habit spiraled out of control. Bass player Norbert Putnam was disturbed by what he saw in December of that year during recording sessions at Stax Studios in Memphis: Someone should have staged an intervention, and that someone was Tom Parker. But he didn't, and I wish I knew why….Red West [Elvis’s bodyguard] “always had Elvis' back and I think he tried to do something. But no one could get through to him with all of that medication. We’ll never know if a concerted effort would have worked. In 1977, the greatest rock-and-roll artist of all time died alone in his home at the age of forty-two from complications of drug abuse. Cut to 41 years later. Elon Musk tweets this: Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured.