If you saw the movie “Cast Away,” you’ll no doubt remember the character portrayed by Tom Hanks. He was the epitome of the company man—a hard-driven manager at Federal Express obsessed by timetables and a total dedication to the corporate mission. That is, until a fateful night when his plane is caught in a storm and goes down in the Pacific Ocean. He miraculously manages to survive, only to find himself stranded on a remote, uninhabited island where all of the artificial values and goals that had seemed of such utmost importance—his “corporate persona,” so to speak—are rendered meaningless. Suddenly, he is faced with having to rely solely on his own inner resources.

The “discovery” of who we truly are is something that every one of us whose everyday existence is dominated by the need to get a paycheck, can achieve—maybe not in such a dramatic fashion, but to a degree sufficient enough to make our lives more satisfying, less stressful, and more fulfilling. The secret lies in separating your personal identity from your corporate one—that is, in being able to emotionally detach yourself from your job while holding onto whatever immediate security your paycheck provides.

The fundamental principle isn’t all that complicated. When you realize that you are an individual with goals and objectives that your work has kept you from, you start looking at the job and the corporate structure objectively and without emotion. First, you must wake up to fact that control and fear factors are intrinsic to the very nature of corporations — particularly the stockholder-owned conglomerates that have come to dominate the contemporary scene. That is to say, without consciously doing so, the typical corporation begins to slowly control the people in its employ by unknowingly instilling a certain amount of fear that they may not get a check next week. This undercurrent of fear tends to permeate all levels of the organization, especially in any economic downtime, as reflected in such warnings as, “There will be layoffs if we don’t make our numbers,” or statements like, “In business, the only thing that matters is the bottom line.” This is a subtle and slow process. In fact, most people don’t realize it is going on. They are too concerned with the need for a regular paycheck and the fact that there are not that many places where they can get one—not to mention insurance, retirement and other benefits that weigh in.

Others companies make a point of eliminating bureaucracy and repressing the tendency to control their personnel, and may even gain reputations as enlightened employers. Such companies have a way of spawning incredible creativity and innovation in the process of achieving major aims and objectives. Unfortunately, even in these cases the pendulum often swings toward greater control in tough economic times. People who work for firms reputed to be “benevolent” start feeling increased pressure to devote more and more of their time and effort to the job. Such dedication may work for a while, but invariably the slow creep of fear and control can gradually overcome the individual.

This leads to a steady erosion of the very employee attributes that are so essential to keeping a company successful—enthusiasm, creativity and innovation. It is therefore essential to our well-being—and even to our ability to continue to be productive workers—that we separate our true selves, and wall off our emotional responses, from the companies for which we work. By that, I mean doing as good a job as you can for your employer while simultaneously working to strengthen your inner resources and aspects of your life that aren’t job related. In other words, rebuilding and refocusing your true identity, so that even if the company you work for (or indeed, the entire corporate structure) were to simply vanishovernight, your own sense of self-worth would remain intact, as would your ability to survive and enjoy life. The Detachment Paradox, in essence, is the precept that employees who are managed by fear in a corporate structure will tend to be unproductive and unhealthy, whereas emotional detachment from the job, along with a sense of personal mission, can restore innovation and productivity at work and make for healthier and happier employees. The paradox here is that ultimately, by separating from the company emotionally, you actually become a more motivated employee. There’s no question that when you are feeling good you’re far more likely to put forth your best effort in anything you do.

According to Dr, Paul Rosch, president of the American Institute of Stress (AIS), an estimated 1 million workers are now absent daily due to stress, costing American industry $300 billion a year in terms of diminished productivity. What I’ve observed, however, is that employees themselves often don’t realize just how stressed out they are, and it may take a spouse or significant other to recognize the toll that unrelenting job pressure is taking not only on yourself but on your relationship.

Amazingly, you have the choice to dispense with most of this stress, and thus to be more productive and creative in your job. Over a quarter century ago, I went to work for a major Fortune 200 company. I spent ten years in that environment, becoming intimately familiar with its inner workings as a member of the management advisory board to the board of directors and as a company “fast track” participant. But despite having what was considered a key role in the corporate growth pattern, I felt increasingly uncomfortable and out of my element.  For one thing, being from southern California and not the Midwest, I never quite adapted to the idea of having to put on a jacket every time I went to the cafeteria.) This was where I first started to learn about emotionally “detaching” from my company job—of psychologically distancing myself from my surroundings and pressures. At first, I probably did so as a kind of natural defense mechanism, without quite realizing what it meant—but when it occurred, I soon discovered that my perceptions of what was going on around me had sharpened considerably. The phenomenon that I found to be most interesting was that the more I emotionally detached, the clearer my thought processes became, and the more productive I was. And in the end more people wanted to work with me because somehow without altering my environment I had learned how to view it from a different perspective, without the emotional involvement that had slowly been turning me into a sleepless wreck with bags under my eyes. The calm and positive attitude I exuded was becoming contagious.

I began to realize and observe how unhealthy an environment this corporation was for those involved. Despite all the economic benefits their positions afforded, some of the company’s highest ranking officers seemed to be in the worst shape of all, chain-smoking cigarettes, downing endless cups of coffee, getting little or no exercise, and generally putting themselves on a fast track toward a heart attack and a host of other medical problems.

The funny thing was, however, that it really no longer mattered that much to me. Since my original intent had been to devote no more than ten years of my life to this particular company, I now felt more equipped than ever to go through with that plan. (Don’t get me wrong—after ten years, there were many people that I liked working with, so the decision to leave was not nearly as cut and dried as it appears here.)

On the 10th anniversary of my joining the company, I announced to the group I was leaving—in fact, leaving St. Louis, where the company was based, and, at the urging of my wife Lisa, moving back to the West Coast. Everyone naturally assumed that I had gotten a better job offer—but I hadn’t. Instead, I had accepted an opportunity to be part of a leveraged buyout that I wasn’t sure would ever materialize. My goal was to discover who I really was and what I was capable of achieving on my own. I had come to the conclusion that something about the corporate pyramid of command and control from the top down wasn’t a structure that worked for me. And I have since concluded that it doesn’t really work for millions of other employees, either—although they might not be as inclined to take a risk as I was, particularly in uncertain economic times. That, in fact, is precisely why I set about writing this book—to help those millions of workers cast off the psychological chains of the corporation without having to leave their jobs or risk losing a regular paycheck.

Most of my career has been spent in the “risk-averse” manage-byfear corporate environment. What I have learned, after having expended an inordinate amount of time in fighting this particular fear-driven windmill, is the futility of trying to produce significant change in a corporate culture. Business may undergo radical transformation in technology—as, for example, where we are today in terms of instant worldwide communications as opposed to twenty years ago when even fax machines were few and far between. But the basic structure of the corporation, which originally evolved centuries ago in Medieval Europe, has continued to remain static—with power emanating from a supreme head and a 3,000-year-old hierarchical system designed to operate without emotion, to compel and manipulate, to discourage individuality, initiative and innovation, and to discard people like so many disposable pieces of  quipment when their services are no longer desired. Those may sound like harsh words coming from as positively oriented a person as myself, but I want to get your attention. This is the structure we have inherited, and you need to be aware of what’s embedded in the corporate DNA. Did you ever wonder where common business phrases like “you are not paid to think” or “it’s my way or the highway” came from? During tough economic times even notable corporate exceptions are eventually apt to be whipped  nto conformity, giving in to irresistible forces such as consolidation and shareholder demand for immediate gain that are almost certain to compromise the best of intentions. The irony is that enthusiastic and innovative employees are exactly what’s needed at such times to find ways of turning things around. But a corporation, with all its boxes and individual fiefdoms, has trouble recognizing that fact.