Why Everything Gets Worse Right When You Finally 'Make It'

let's talk about the success trap that nobody warns you about because what i'm going to talk about today has happened to me many times it's happened to basically everybody i know at some point in their career or in their life and when it does happen to you it feels very lonely so let's talk about when you do everything right and it just feels like the reward that the universe gives you is more problems and more anxiety let me frame it for you so say you're building a business you just started it's going incredible it's growing uh congratulations now you're a year in or two years in and things are really starting to take off now if we look back six months ago you were begging the universe for the problems that you have now the business that's now overwhelming you manifested it the opportunities that are all basically crushing and weighing on you at one point you were praying for them and all this visibility that you're getting it's attracting all these critics well you worked for years to build it and now you're lying in your bed at 2 p.m. on a Tuesday and your laptops close and your phones on silent and you're wondering how success because it doesn't feel like success but it is success you're wondering how success has managed to feel exactly like failure the deal that you just spent three months nurturing just evaporated in a two sentence email somebody with 47 followers is tearing you apart and your life's work apart on Twitter and somehow 10,000 people agree with them and the decision that made perfect sense with the information that you had a year ago turned into a disaster that you'll be cleaning up for months and you want to quit not because you're weak because you're exhausted from being strong this is what nobody tells you about building something that matters the universe doesn't test you less as you grow it just upgrades the difficulty setting and you're going to wonder why is it so hard for me to deal with this why does it feel so crushing so overwhelming when objectively things are going right but the problems just feel like they weigh on me so much more than when I started well the reason why is because when you were starting out again in anything new the stakes are very low so a bad day meant losing a hundred bucks or disappointing three people right now if you built something big a bad day means losing a hundred thousand dollars or disappointing three thousand people so the stakes got higher but you're a human and your nervous system stayed the same your body doesn't know the difference between a failed Etsy shop and a failed series a it just knows danger it just knows threat it just knows that thing that you built your identity around might be crumbling and it responds the only way that it knows how which is total system shutdown anxiety stress depression so how do we react well we don't tell the world this but we pull the covers over our head and then for a moment you try and disappear from your own life and it's not because you're weak it's because you're human and humans weren't designed to fail at scale but here's the thing about those covers you're hiding under they're not obviously protecting you from the world they're protecting you from the story that you're telling yourself about the world the story where one bad month erases three good years where one harsh critic matters more than a thousand supporters where one failed deal means you're never going to close another one and that story is lying to you now some of you may or may not know the myth and the story of icarus it's a very famous story it's about this guy who flew too close to the sun his wings melted he fell into the sea it is a very classic cautionary tale about ambition but here's what they don't tell you about icarus his father datalus warned him about flying too high and too low too close to the sun would melt the wax but too close to the sea would dampen the feathers so the real danger wasn't ambition it was over correction and right now you're over correcting one deal falls through so you question everything right you question every single deal one person attacks you online so you assume that everyone secretly hates you one decision backfires so you stop trusting your judgment entirely you are flying so low right now to avoid that sun that you're about to drown in the waves every founder i know every single one has their bed week right that stretch where they just couldn't anymore but the difference between people who build extraordinary things and people who don't isn't that the builders and the people that look successful don't break it's that they've just learned breaking is part of the building so your breakdown isn't a deviation from the path it is the path and this is something that i've learned from watching way too many people employed you're not actually upset about what happened you're upset about what it means the deal that fell through doesn't hurt because of the money it hurts because you tied your identity to being someone who closes deals the critic doesn't sting because they're right they sting because you've been secretly wondering if you're a fraud and now someone said it out loud the bad decision doesn't haunt you because of its consequences it haunts you because you built yourself worth on being someone who makes good decisions you've created a single point of failure for your entire identity one crack and the whole thing shatters but professional investors never put everything into one stock but somehow you've put your entire sense of self in one story about who you're supposed to be so you want to know why you can't get out of bed because getting out of bed means facing the possibility that that story might not be true but here's what i need you to understand that story was never true it was always just a story the version of you who never fails never doubts never needs the three days in bed to just process the weight of it all that person doesn't exist they never did and trying to be them is what's killing you so i need you to do a memory audit through this right now i'm serious even if you are reading this from under those covers write three things down first something that you've done that you once thought was impossible second a disaster that you survived that should have ended you and third a current problem that would have been a dream problem three years ago oh wait seriously really do it because here's what you're going to notice your current ceiling the one you are living in right now was once you're impossible your current crisis would have been your past self's victory and your problems have scaled with your capabilities means your capabilities have been scaling all along you're not drowning because you're weak you're drowning because you're swimming in deeper water than you've ever been in before but you learned to swim in the shallow end you learn to swim in the medium end and you're gonna learn to swim here too the only difference is that this time you know what drowning feels like so you're scared before you even start now a lot of people are gonna give you very useless advice at this point when you're stressed out they're either gonna say give up but if you're surrounded by the right people they're actually gonna give you the wrong advice in the opposite direction they're gonna tell you to just push through it to hustle harder to remember your wife fuck that you don't need motivation you need mechanics there's a framework it's worked for me it's worked for a lot of people it's gonna work for you it's gonna help you get out of your funk first you want to shrink the timeline so don't think about next month or next year i want you to think about the next hour can you survive the next hour good do that 24 times i want you to lower the bar to the floor okay you're going through something right now it's stressful i get it so today's victory might just be eating something that isn't cereal taking one shower answering one email the bar for today is wherever you need it to be to clear it next stop treating recovery like failure athletes don't train seven days a week they build in recovery because recovery is how you get stronger so your bed week isn't you failing it's you recovering the breakdown is part of the breakthrough and lastly remember that feelings aren't facts you feel like a failure you feel like it's over you feel like you can't do this cool feelings are just weather patterns in your brain wait 20 minutes the weather will change but the most important thing is that you have to stop trying to skip this part you have to stop trying to skip when life is telling you that things are tough you can't just always suppress it because i know that everybody wants to fast forward through the breakdown and get to the part where you're stronger where you've learned the lesson where you can tell this inspiring story about how you overcame but you can't have the resurrection without the death you can't have the comeback without the setback and you definitely can't have the breakthrough without the breakdown the part this part the part where you're under the covers questioning everything stressed out feeling like the world is too much this isn't a detour from your success story this is a chapter in it remember every biography you've ever read any person you admire they have multiple chapters they're just usually compressed into a single paragraph that starts with well it was during this period of intense doubt that dot dot dot see you're living that paragraph right now in real time in real time is slow and painful and full of uncertainty but here's what those biographies also tell you the people who change things aren't the ones who never fell apart they're the ones who fell apart and discovered they could put themselves back together different and stronger more honest about what actually matters so you have to accept this truth you have to accept the truth that you're not behind you're not failing you're not weak you're just human doing inhuman things at an inhuman pace with inhuman expectations your body is forcing you to stop because your mind won't your soul is demanding rest because your ego won't allow it and your breakdown is your wisdom trying to save you from your ambition so listen to it the world will still be there when you're ready to face it again the opportunities will still exist and the work will still matter but none of it matters if you're not here to do it so stay under those covers for as long as you need feel the weight of it all let yourself break completely because sometimes the only way out is through and sometimes through looks like three days in bed questioning everything before you remember who you are and while you started you've survived the worst day of your life so far you'll survive this one too and when you finally do get up not because you have to but because you're ready to you'll realize something that changes everything the weight that was crushing you you've been carrying it for so long you forgot you could put it down put it down the world needs what you're building but first you need to remember that you're allowed to be human while you build it so get back up when you're ready not a second before bigger things are waiting but they'll wait for you they always do