Thrive at the Top: The CEO's Guide to Chronic Pain Relief

By Ken Malloy and Les Fehmi

For those who are sacrificing well-being for success, Thrive at the Top offers game-changing insights and field-tested strategies leaders can apply quickly and easily to dissolve chronic pain and take of their health in the face of the complex demands of work and life.

The rewards of a high-powered job can be substantial, but so can the demands, and learning to keep up with the challenges of staying healthy is the most important skill CEOs and other leaders must maintain for long-term success. When the inevitable physical and emotional symptoms of stress appear—back pain, headaches, anxiety, insomnia, etc.—as a result of putting the day-to-day of a job first, guilt and overwhelm are typically the first response. In Thrive at the Top, Mindbody Solutions executive coach Ken Malloy sheds lights on the causes of these stress symptoms and provides the tools and techniques readers need to live symptom-free. Corporate titans and entrepreneurs alike learn to engage with their work at full capacity while maintaining a state of relaxed productivity while quickly restoring their sense of stability in the face of difficult people and situations to create a balanced life and find relief from chronic pain.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jul 9, 2019
• ISBN: 9781642793772

Book preview

Chapter 1:

BEGINNING THE JOURNEY

When people tell me of their great success, I tell them I hope it doesn’t hurt them too much.

– Sigmund Freud

Congratulations.

You’ve got a high-profile, prestigious, and well-paying job — or you’ve started your own successful business. You’ve worked hard and made it to the top. Likely, you’ve earned and deserve the success that you’ve achieved. Perhaps all is going well, except for one thing: you’re struggling with chronic pain or other symptoms such as headaches, insomnia, heartburn, anxiety, etc., and this has become a problem for you. Perhaps it’s a new symptom or something that’s been around for a while. In either case, it’s significant. It’s affecting you enough that you need to do something about it.

Many types of pain are messages from the body that something needs medical attention — often immediate medical attention. And so, in the case of any persistent pain, you must immediately seek professional medical help and get yourself completely checked out to rule out any structural or organic condition — disorder or disease — that may be causing your pain. Once you have done so, you’re free to consider other origins of your symptoms.

Usually, two things happen when clients see the doctor. One is they rule out serious disease. The second is they may discover that doctors don’t have answers as to why they have symptoms, and so they continue to suffer. Either the doctor cannot determine the cause of the pain, or they may misdiagnose it; blame the pain on something that is not causing the pain. That’s where this book can help.

Western medicine is brilliant at diagnosing and treating many conditions. Traditional doctors cure diseases and save lives every day; however, they don’t have all the answers. In this book, I’m going to share with you how to heal your chronic pain and symptoms when traditional, Western medicine cannot, so you can continue to enjoy your career and pursue your dreams.

What’s normally easy becomes difficult and potentially overwhelming when you’re in pain. It’s harder to think strategically, to make good decisions, to negotiate, to be inspired, to resolve conflicts. You lose your edge. And there’s a lot at risk because your difficult job and demanding career require that you bring forth your best.

Before we go further, here are two important things for me to tell you. I’ve met you and I’ve been you. In the decades that I spent in corporate America, I interacted directly and privately with many CEOs of top Fortune 500 companies. Their companies were clients of my video production company and so I had the rare opportunity to consult with many CEOs on their marketing, and coach them on their on-camera presentation. I understand the man (and woman), behind the curtain who, more often than not, would rather remain private. I don’t blame you for that. I’ve had a chance to see and know CEOs with their hair down and make-up off and so, I’ve learned a great deal about what makes them, and you, tick. Also, as the owner of a successful business in New York City, I was susceptible to the same forces and, as a result, have lived through some rather protracted and intense symptoms myself — until I found or figured out ways to get relief. This book is here to teach you the tools and techniques to become symptom-free, but also to remind you of what is important, even essential, for you to ensure that — pain-free or not —you take the right care of yourself so your success will be both satisfying and sustainable. Even if you don’t experience pain, the most dramatic symptom, you may feel overwhelmed and exhausted at times. If you might be easily irritated or impatient, vulnerable to anxiety, or if you find it too challenging to focus or struggle with other physical symptoms such as insomnia, or stomach ailments, then this book is still for you. If you don’t have symptoms but rather sense that your physical or mental well-being is somehow at stake, then this book is for you too.

You’ll discover the causes of your symptoms and learn exactly what to do about them. You’ll understand how to get rid of them so that you can feel better quickly and easily and you’ll know what to do to keep them from coming back.

If you’re experiencing feelings of anxiety and hopelessness about your symptoms never going away or even getting worse, those feelings will disappear. As a successful CEO, senior executive, or business owner, you will again be highly effective and productive at your job, free from the unpleasant experiences that may be plaguing