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The man was enormously successful by America's contemporary standards of material accomplishment: a meteoric rise up the corporate ladder; a 4700 square foot house in an exclusive suburb; over $200,000 annual salary; a beautiful wife and two intelligent, well-behaved children. Yet all he could talk about was the knot in his stomach that wouldn't go away, and the sheer loneliness and emptiness of his existence. He had no true friends, did not know how to talk with his children, he and his wife were distant and angry, and he didn't feel his work or life had any meaning. Is this success?

We have worked with too many men and women like this man: working, pushing and achieving, yet feeling on the inside like a rat stuck on a wheel going nowhere fast. Americans work more hours and take less vacations than any culture in the world. While our standard of material life may be the envy of the world, our inner life is the object of comments like that of Mother Theresa, who said she had never seen such emotional poverty as she saw in America.

Joe Dominguez, deceased author of the best-selling underground classic "Your Money or Your Life", and a rare voice of sanity amid mindless consumerism, was fond of asking participants at workshops, "Are you making a living or making a dying? If you're making a living, at the end of each day you should feel more alive, more rejuvenated, more connected with others, and more grateful to be living the life you have." By this definition, many Americans are making a dying: feeling exhausted, cut off from others, numb and depleted, while chasing illusory material goals whose gratification is fleeting and empty.