As you go through life, people are going to stereotype you. They are going to do all in their power to put you in a box based on how you look, where you work, and where you live. This allows them to mentally file you away alongside the thousands of other boxes consuming their mental real estate.

Take Emmett, for example. Let’s say that Emmett is an entrepreneur who lives in Palo Alto, attended Stanford, and wears tee shirts and jeans to work every day. When you meet Emmett and learn about these characteristics, you immediately try to put him in a box that you neatly file next to the boxes consisting of all the other entrepreneurs that you know. For you, this categorization is effective in that it allows you to infer many other things about Emmett based upon his entrepreneurial characteristics – most of which are probably correct. But for Emmett, the fact that you filed him in the entrepreneurial box in the first place may make him feel the need to hide his other interests in order to assume the mold associated with his primary domain.

What if Emmett is an entrepreneur who paints watercolors two nights per week and writes fiction novels on the weekend? What if he lives in Palo Alto but spends three months of the year in Montana taking care of his parents? What if he only started his company as a means of generating enough revenue to support his dream of becoming a full time writer or artist? With this additional information, the box that we tried to put him in may not be as appropriate as it originally seemed.

We are not meant to be singular beings, put in boxes, stacked away collecting dust. We are complex, creative, living beings constantly exploring and trying to improve our understanding of the world around us. When people that we meet want to force us into nice little boxes, it is not our responsibility to help them to do so. It is our responsibility to simply be the multifaceted beings that we are.

Having interests outside the scope of your primary domain does not make you strange. It makes you interesting. It gives you something to talk about when you bring clients out to dinner. It stimulates creative thinking in your primary domain, as it allows you to draw new connections derived from the influx of outside material.

Don’t be afraid to break the mold and defy stereotypes. Be the investment banker who bakes, the athlete who sings, or the ballet dancer who spends her weekends going to heavy metal concerts.

Keep breaking barriers. Never limit your journey simply because it doesn’t make sense to other people.

Have you ever wanted something really badly? And when you did, what did that feel like? Every morning when you wake up, the gears in your mind start turning, and one cup of coffee quickly turns into six, and your mind doesn’t stop churning until your head hits the pillow at 2AM (on a good day). The days just roll by, and instead of staring at your watch waiting for time to pass, you’re constantly chasing it, wishing you could slow it down. Why? Because you care. You care so much about the purpose, the process, and the outcome that your goal becomes all consuming.

Being passionate about an idea and becoming so strongly invested in something that you care about the outcome is a good thing. But the more that you want something, the more likely you are to fall victim to caring too much, to becoming so focused on the outcome and achieving your goal that you go into a bubble and lose your sense of perspective.

Intensely caring about something that you hope to achieve is positive in the sense that it helps to align your interests, but caring too much can be debilitating. When we care about something 'just enough,' we maintain a certain degree of perspective that allows us to see that we are more than one individual goal, and our character does not rest solely on the evaluation of our successes and failures. Caring just enough allows us to voice our opinion, to take the risks necessary to help to carve out the path to help us to reach our goals in the first place. It comes with a whimsical attitude aligned with the many alternatives we have at our fingertips if all else fails.

But the more invested that we become in our success in a particular endeavor, the more we put ourselves at risk of caring too much. Caring too much can be debilitating and slow us down in reaching our goals, as the feeling reinitiates our fear of failure. When we care so much about succeeding, failing or falling short of our goals no longer feels like an option. We lose sight of all alternatives and get sucked into a vortex where we place unnecessary weight on our words and actions. In the process, not only do we risk losing the love of the game, but we risk undermining ourselves in the process.

The key to winning is not to stop caring, but to train yourself to maintain a sense of perspective that allows you to care just enough. Here are a few ways to begin to find an acceptable balance between constantly firing with an intense drive and maintaining an overarching perspective:

1) Remind yourself of the alternatives. If all else fails, what is your next best option? In the grand scheme of things, if you had to resort to your next best alternative, would it really be all that bad?

2) Do something for yourself every day. The more that you want something, the easier it is to adopt a singular focus. While this singular processing mechanism can be efficient for some time, once it reaches a tipping point, it may be taken too far. To prevent this degree of burnout, do something every single day just for the sake of doing it – something completely for yourself and unrelated to your primary focus or goal.

3) Read stories or talk to other people about the state of their lives. Expose yourself to diverse perspectives or delve into fantasy worlds that are far from your own. Learn about the lifestyle, the goals, and the various aspects of the lives of others. Not only can this often be a humbling experience, but it can remind you that there is more than one way to live your life.

4) Take five minutes to write down a list of things that you have accomplished up to this point in your life. When you care so much about achieving something or reaching a goal, it is important to remember all of the effort that you expended and the small wins that have gotten you to where you are standing today. This will help you to remember all of the tools that you have at your disposal and that your reputation is defined by more than any one individual outcome.

5) Stop worrying about what everyone else is doing. We are all different people, with different backgrounds, with different personalities, who move at different paces, and who have individualized approaches to reaching an end goal. Just because someone else is taking a particular approach in attempt to reach an end goal, it does not mean it is the most efficient path, nor does it mean it is the path best-suited for you. By overtly worrying about what other people are doing and how they are doing it, you are putting unnecessary pressure on yourself to be someone that you’re not. Focus on you. Move at your own pace, and keep your eye on the prize.

While caring about something, whether it be achieving a goal or bettering yourself in some way, is an important aspect of improving your odds of achieving it, caring too much can drive you into overload and put you in a position where you are constantly putting unnecessary pressure on yourself. When you begin to feel this happening, it is important to consider the counterfactual – if all else fails and this doesn’t happen, what is my next best alternative? Chances are, you’re going to be alright. As much as you want to reach your goal, you may be unknowingly driving yourself into a wall by caring so much that your drive is debilitating - and maybe, just maybe, you’d actually perform better if you kept caring, but you just learned to care a little less.