#103: What If Success Brings You the Wrong Life?

A life can look respectable, successful, even enviable, and still be badly chosen.

The frightening part is that this usually doesn't happen because of one reckless decision.

It happens through years of reasonable choices.

Another demanding stage at the company. Another opportunity worth taking. Another reason to wait before making room for a serious relationship, children, old friends, or aging parents.

Each decision makes sense on its own.

Then one day, those decisions have added up to a life.

In Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich, a capable and respected man discovers too late that the very success that kept rewarding him also helped him avoid asking what his life was actually becoming.

This episode looks at why legacy can mislead us, why success can reinforce choices that deserve more scrutiny, and how to use the deathbed test before the answer is no longer useful.

If you're ambitious, still building, and still assuming there will be time for the rest of life later, listen now.

Show Highlights Include:

The devastating story of Ivan Ilyich's short-lived legacy (and how his story proves that building a legacy is not evidence of a well-lived life) (0:34)

How to take the classic "Deathbed Test" and push it several layers deeper to uncover how to live your life well for yourself (2:21)