There is no way, you tell yourself, that your resume can be shortened to fill only one page. Just listing all the places you've worked will take the first page, and that doesn't even include the schools you've attended.

You may wonder how others can keep their achievements so succinct. Why, just in the last two years you've had five jobs, and you left them because it was the right thing to do. It wasn't as if you couldn't succeed in those positions, it's just that you felt it was time to move on.

If this sounds familiar, you are perhaps one of those rare cases of the "coulda-been" (``I coulda been a contender") identified by Harvard business psychologists James Waldroop and Timothy Butler. In their book Maximum Success (Doubleday, $24.95), they define this person as having "huge eyes for achievement and a very limited tolerance for delay of gratification."

In other words, they want to be at the top, they want it now but they don't have the patience to work for it.

"This is usually someone who doesn't have a sense of who they are. They are constantly looking in the mirror trying to figure it out, but they can't get a glimpse," says Waldroop, a director at the Harvard Business School MBA Career Development Program with Butler.

Waldroop says it's not that this "coulda-been" believes no job is good enough, it's that this person believes they're not good enough for any job. As a result, they often are paralyzed by shame and failure and so do not even begin to strive for success.

"It's really very, very painful for these people," Waldroop says. "They're always comparing themselves with the outside, and trying to preserve that little shred of integrity. They tell themselves that if they don't really try, then they don't really fail."

How it starts

How do you get to be a "coulda-been?" Waldroop says he and Butler have observed that they often are molded in childhood, often from a very high-achieving family. They grow up under great pressure to not only be better than other children in whatever they do, but "to be better than they are and can possibly be."

"That's why it's so difficult to work through this problem on your own," Waldroop says. "It's so deeply rooted, and so character driven. And the last thing you want to do is admit you have a problem."

Waldroop says that "coulda-beens" often are men because the male culture focuses on measuring achievement. He says that children who are pushed too early to do things they are not ready for reading, math, sports are given no time to appreciate and relish what they have accomplished because they're always looking to climb further up the ladder.

While he believes that this problem is so difficult that many can only be helped through a therapist, Waldroop says there are some ways you can begin to get a handle on whether you're a "coulda-been." He and Butler suggest: