EXPERT: Dr. Mark Goulston

Warren Buffett has said that people don't succeed because they get in their own way, not because the world prevents them.

This not only applies to most people, it even applies to experts who have written multiple books on the subject, as in "me."

Although I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, nearly dying is one of the best ways to finally take steps to get out of your own way and find out what's important and what's not important to you. That's what happened to me four years ago. My colon had perforated. The doctors said it was diverticulitis. I knew different. It was from kidding myself that I could stay ahead of all the crap in life, when in reality I couldn't. And so when all the crap overtook me, I imploded.

To me, crap is crappy people and crappy situations filled with crappy people. Crappy people are people who take no responsibility for their life, make their problems everyone else's fault, stay stuck in the problem instead of the solution and who sooner or later burn out people, even people trained to be very patient listeners like me.

When I awoke from life saving surgery I made a commitment to focus all my attention on the non-crappy, good people who take responsibility for their lives and their problems and focus on solutions and taking action…and to not let any new crappy people into my life. Because having almost killed me the first time, I didn't want to give them a second chance.

At Peoplejam and at my site: http://markgoulston.com I am dedicated to helping people who take responsibility for their lives to build and create the best lives possible both at work and at home.

I was trained as a medical doctor at Boston University, completed psychiatry training at UCLA and had a clinical practice for twenty years, specializing in individuals, couples, families from adolescents to the elderly, from the deeply suicidal to the moderately troubled.

My mentor, Dr. Edwin Shneidman, was one of the pioneers in the study of suicide and so I focused on suicide (see: http://markgoulston.com/articles/latimesdoctorfiles.shtml), death and dying for a number of years, including house calls to terminally ill patients (see: http://markgoulston.com/articles/housecalls.shtml). With the latter I would help families bury the hatchet at the eleventh hour and after that some of these families would then have me intervene with families businesses after the death of the founder.

In the past ten years I have expanded my focus to family businesses, training FBI and police hostage negotiators and speaking/training Fortune 500 companies as part of my business partnership with Keith Ferrazzi, author of the NY Times best seller, Never Eat Alone (which I highly recommend to all of you).

I write "The Leading Edge" column for Fast Company (see: http://www.fastcompany.com/resources/leadership/columns.html) and am the best selling author of four books: Get Out of Your Own Way, The 6 Secrets of a Lasting Relationship, Get Out of Your Own Way at Work, and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder for Dummies (see: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/002-3541127-3008804?... ). I formerly wrote the twice weekly Knight Ridder Tribune nationally syndicated college newspaper column: "Relationships 101: Sex, Drugs, Rock and Relationships" (see samples at: http://markgoulston.com/articles/relationships101.shtml).

As Peoplejam "get out of your own way" expert, I will be very interested in hearing stories of people who identified and overcame a self-defeating behavior (SDB) including: a) what the SDB was; b) what caused you to finally decided to stop and overcome it; c) how you successfully stopped and overcame it; d) the difference it has made in your life.

There are few things that make you feel worse about yourself than having a SDB mess your life, but fortunately there are few things that make you feel better about yourself than stopping and overcoming it.

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