324: Keren Eldad: How To Overcome The Superstar Paradox and Experience True Success

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Are You An Overachiever – Always Striving To Do More, Be More, and Never Having Enough?

Keren Eldad

As a business coach and speaker, Keren Eldad is a trusted advisor to industry-leading executives and superstar entrepreneurs who are setting records at the top of their fields. Since 2016, powerhouses have sought her out to help them make significant breakthroughs in the profitable growth of their business while revitalizing their energy and defining the meaning of their entire lives.

Over the last three years, Keren has developed a measurably impactful and streamlined executive coaching process to do this, while working with top organizations including: J.P. Morgan, Christian Dior/LVMH, Van Cleef & Arpels, Vacheron Constantin, IWC, Waypoint Helicopter Leasing, Beyond Capital, YPO- and more.

A diplomat’s daughter and graduate of the London School of Economics, Keren speaks five languages and easily relates her message to anyone and everyone, including her social media following of 100K. Having served in the Israeli army and emerging into coaching from crisis counseling, Keren believes in service as a way of life, and is focused on adding value and making things better and easier for others. As a coach, she is accredited by the ICF, WCI and TTI Insights (ACC, CPC, CEC , C.P.M.A., C.P.B.A., C.P.T.A.), and is a top-level Crisis Counselor with Crisis Text Line.

She has been featured on The Today Show, O, the Oprah Magazine, Forbes, Harvard Business Review, Bravo, TEDx, and many more media outlets. She helps leaders make significant breakthroughs in the profitable growth of their business while revitalizing their energy and defining the meaning of their lives.

What We Discuss With Keren Eldad In This Episode

The Superstar Paradox and how it affects high-performing leaders
The truth about positive psychology and to use it to find true fulfillment
The benefit of life transitions, just like the world is in right now with COVID-19
The effects of today’s social media culture, especially on the overachiever
How invulnerability can lead to unethical behavior and a lack of self-awareness
How to recognize the Superstar Paradox in leaders you are considering following

Episode Transcript Highlights

The Superstar Paradox

I’m a huge believer of conscious capitalism but there should be checks and balances of consciousness taking place.

Conscious means being self-aware; understanding and embracing core fundamental values that guide you as you embrace capitalism.

The Superstar Paradox is a phenomenon that I discovered working with high-powered, world-class leaders, where their outward success was not commensurate of their inward bad feeling. They were producing a life of achievement that was translating to a life of dissatisfaction underneath.

Most people who believe that money, status, and power will result in happiness are usually baffled about what they’re doing wrong when it comes to the consequence that is not that.

We’re not talking about divorce, depression or panic attacks although these are extraordinarily common in the overachiever echelon. I’m really talking about that nagging sense of “Is that all there is? Shouldn’t I feel better about this?”

There is a presumption among overachievers that life should be linear, whereas life is in the transitions. All the glory is in the transitions. Unfortunately they don’t feel good to us but we do enormously benefit from them. We show who we really are through them.

A Different Approach To Mindset

There are two flawed premises related to mindset. A mindset can be negative. It is the conglomerate of thoughts you are fixated on; your practiced point of focus.

For 60 years psychology was a look at pathos and neuroses. In the 80s and 90s, Dr. Martin Seligman and other very forward thinking organizational psychologists suggested that we start studying mindfulness, happiness and resilience, and other hallmarks of wellbeing.

Usually when people seek coaching they’re Olympic champions who want to get better, richer, faster, and more productive. You can definitely raise your game but the real game is the mindset game – the mindset of resilience and passion.

You really have to work on the systematic dissolution of the fear that’s showing up for you. That awareness can be created right now. You can tell if your life is going the way you really want in two ways. The first way, is what’s showing up in your life. The systems are fantastic, your wealth is productive, your health is well, and you are in a marriage or relationship and are thriving in it. The second way is how you feel. You feel happier and you don’t feel unhappy.

We are living in very unusual times and the rate of change is far more all-encompassing, globalized and faster.

100 years ago, your mindset, opinion of yourself, and beliefs were generally formed by your parents, peers, and community – your immediate society. Today, you’re taking cues from strangers on Instagram that you’ve never met before, and they are telling you what a good life looks like. That is creating enormous dissonance for most people, and especially for young people.

As a suicide counselor with crisis text line, 75% of callers are under the age of 25. I always find myself saying on the line, “Nobody’s life looks inside as good as it does on Instagram.” When you’re buying into that, you start wearing masks, pretending that everything is amazing on Instagram, buying vacations that you cannot afford, living way outside your means, and pretending like you’ve got this.

The Power of Vulnerability

Invulnerability doesn’t allow anyone to reach you or connect with you on a genuine level.

What people are trying to mask is shame; the shame of not measuring up and the shame of knowing that you’re pretending. This can also lead to unethical behavior and the shame of being a fraud.

Integrity is the only thing that really matters here.

Warren Buffett says that if you hire people, hire them for 3 things: intelligence, enthusiasm and integrity. If you don’t have the third, forget about the first two, they’re detrimental.

It’s the same with companies. If you’re choosing a company to work for, look at their leadership, what they stand for, and how long they’ve stood in it.

Excellence vs Perfectionism

The difference between perfectionism and having high standards is how you feel. Perfectionism feels awful, especially when you falter (and you will – everybody does).

High standards include an excitement about the creation. Setbacks only excite you more. You’re competing with yourself. The accomplishments of others not only don’t bug you, you are thrilled for other people’s success.

That is the same difference between the Superstar Paradox and a true Superstar. There are Superstars who know that there are times which are not easy, that’s how life is. That’s a big difference between constantly winning and feel wrecked with anxiety every day.

Episode Resources

TEDx Talk: You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know – Uncertainty In A Changing World

Connect With Keren Eldad

Website: KerenEldad.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keren-eldad-5232033
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LiveWithEnthusiasm
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/coachkeren

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora or Stitcher.

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Are You An Overachiever – Always Striving To Do More, Be More, and Never Having Enough?