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Lessons - Why Everything Gets Worse Right When You Finally 'Make It (Scott) · Success Story with Scott Clary

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  In today's lessons episode, we're going to talk about something real that hits ambitious people.
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  Every single person deals with this, it's when the success that you've achieved,
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  after pushing so hard, striving, achieving, trying to do things that no one else has ever
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  done before in your career in your business, it feels like it's kicking your ass.
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  You know, when you feel like everything you work for, somehow feels worse than when it started
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  because you're just overwhelmed by your own growth. You want to hide from the world, hide from
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  opportunities that at one point you once begged for, and you're wondering why the bigger you get,
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  the harder it feels. This one's for you. I'll show you why this is normal,
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  why it's actually a sign you're doing something right, and what to do when you just want to
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  shut off from the world. You have anxiety, depression, overwhelm, and you feel like you just can't
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  do this anymore. Let's talk about the success trap that nobody warns you about, because
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  what I'm going to talk about today has happened to me many times. It's happened to basically everybody
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  I know at some point in their career or in their life, and when it does happen to you, it feels very
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  lonely. So let's talk about when you do everything right, and it just feels like the reward that the
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  universe gives you is more problems and more anxiety. Let me frame it for you. So say you're building
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  a business. You just started. It's going incredible. It's growing. Congratulations. Now you're a year
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  in or two years in, and things are really starting to take off. Now, if we look back six months ago,
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  you were begging the universe for the problems that you have now, the business that's now overwhelming.
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  You manifested it. The opportunities that are all basically crushing and weighing on you,
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  at one point you were praying for them, and all this visibility that you're getting is attracting all
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  these critics. Well, you worked for years to build it. And now you're lying in your bed at 2 p.m.
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  on a Tuesday, and your laptops close, and your phones on silent, and you're wondering how success,
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  because it doesn't feel like success, but it is success. You're wondering how success has managed
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  to feel exactly like failure. The deal that you just spent three months nurturing just evaporated
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  in a two sentence email. Somebody with 47 followers is tearing you apart, and your life's work
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  apart on Twitter, and somehow 10,000 people agree with them. And the decision that made perfect
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  sense with the information that you had a year ago turned into a disaster that you'll be cleaning up
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  for months, and you want to quit. Not because you're weak, because you're exhausted from being strong.
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  This is what nobody tells you about building something that matters. The universe doesn't test
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  you less as you grow. It just upgrades the difficulty setting. And you're going to wonder why
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  is it so hard for me to deal with this? Why does it feel so crushing, so overwhelming when
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  objectively things are going right? But the problems just feel like they weigh on me so much more
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  than when I started. Well, the reason why is because when you were starting out, again,
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  in anything new, the stakes are very low. So a bad day meant losing 100 bucks or disappointing
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  three people, right? Now, if you've built something big, a bad day means losing 100,000 dollars
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  or disappointing 3,000 people. So the stakes got higher, but you're a human, and your nervous system
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  stayed the same. Your body doesn't know the difference between a failed Etsy shop and a failed
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  series A. It just knows danger. It just knows threat. It just knows that thing that you built your
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  identity around might be crumbling, and it responds the only way that it knows how, which is
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  total system shutdown, anxiety, stress, depression. So how do we react? Well, we don't tell the world
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  this, but we pull the covers over our head. And then for a moment, you try and disappear from your own
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  life. And it's not because you're weak. It's because you're human. And humans weren't designed
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  to fail at scale. But here's the thing about those covers you're hiding under. They're not
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  obviously protecting you from the world. They're protecting you from the story that you're telling
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  yourself about the world. The story where one bad month erases three good years, where one harsh
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  critic matters more than a thousand supporters, where one failed deal means you're never going to
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  close another one. And that story is lying to you. Now, some of you may or may not know the myth
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  and the story of Icarus. It's a very famous story. It's about this guy who flew too close to
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  the sun. His wings melted. He fell into the sea. It is his very classic cautionary tale about ambition.
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  But here's what they don't tell you about Icarus. His father, Daedalus, warned him about flying too
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  high and too low. Too close to the sun would melt the wax, but too close to the sea would dampen
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  the feathers. So the real danger wasn't ambition. It was over correction. And right now you're
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  overcorrecting. One deal falls through. So you question everything, right? You question every
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  single deal. One person attacks you online. So you assume that everyone secretly hates you.
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  One decision backfires. So you stop trusting your judgment entirely. You are flying so low right
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  now to avoid that sun that you're about to drown in the waves. Every founder I know every single
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  one has their bed week, right? That stretch where they just couldn't anymore. But the difference
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  between people who build extraordinary things and people who don't isn't that the builders and the
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  people that look successful don't break. It's that they've just learned breaking is part of the
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  building. So your breakdown isn't a deviation from the path. It is the path. And this is
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  something that I've learned from watching way too many people implode. You're not actually upset
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  about what happened. You're upset about what it means. The deal that fell through doesn't hurt
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  because of the money. It hurts because you tied your identity to being someone who closes deals.
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  The critic doesn't sting because they're right. They sting because you've been secretly wondering
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  if you're a fraud and now someone said it out loud. The bad decision doesn't haunt you because
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  of its consequences. It haunts you because you built yourself worth on being someone who makes
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  good decisions. You've created a single point of failure for your entire identity. One crack
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  and the whole thing shatters. But professional investors never put everything into one stock,
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  but somehow you've put your entire sense of self in one story about who you're supposed to be.
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  So you want to know why you can't get out of bed because getting out of bed means facing the
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  possibility that that story might not be true. But here's what I need you to understand. That story
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  was never true. It was always just a story. The version of you who never fails, never doubts,
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  never needs the three days in bed to just process the weight of it all. That person doesn't exist.
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  They never did. And trying to be them is what's killing you. So I need you to do a memory audit.
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  Do this right now. I'm serious. Even if you are reading this from under those covers,
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  write three things down. First, something that you've done that you once thought was impossible.
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  Second, a disaster that you survived that should have ended you. And third, a current problem
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  that would have been a dream problem three years ago. Oh wait, seriously, really do it because
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  here's what you're going to notice. Your current ceiling, the one you are living in right now,
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  was once you're impossible. Your current crisis would have been your past self's victory.
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  And your problems have scaled with your capabilities means your capabilities have been scaling
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  all along. You're not drowning because you're weak. You're drowning because you're swimming
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  in deeper water than you've ever been in before. But you learn to swim in the shallow end.
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  You learn to swim in the medium end and you're going to learn to swim here too. The only difference
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  is that this time you know what drowning feels like. So you're scared before you even start.
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  Now, a lot of people are going to give you very useless advice at this point when you're stressed out.
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  They're either going to say give up, but if you're surrounded by the right people,
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  they're actually going to give you the wrong advice in the opposite direction. They're going to
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  tell you to just push through it to hustle harder to remember your why. Fuck that. You don't need
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  motivation. You need mechanics. There's a framework. It's worked for me. It's worked for a lot of people.
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  It's going to work for you. It's going to help you get out of your funk. First, you want to shrink
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  the timeline. So don't think about next month or next year. I want you to think about the next
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  hour. Can you survive the next hour? Good. Do that 24 times. I want you to lower the bar
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  to the floor. Okay. You're going through something right now. It's stressful. I get it. So today's
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  victory might just be eating something that isn't cereal, taking one shower, answering one email.
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  The bar for today is wherever you need it to be to clear it. Next, stop treating recovery like
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  failure. Athletes don't train seven days a week. They build in recovery because recovery is how
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  you get stronger. So your bed week isn't you failing. It's you recovering. The breakdown is part
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  of the breakthrough. And lastly, remember that feelings aren't facts. You feel like a failure.
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  You feel like it's over. You feel like you can't do this. Cool. Feelings are just weather patterns
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  in your brain. Wait 20 minutes. The weather will change. But the most important thing is that you have
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  to stop trying to skip this part. You have to stop trying to skip when life is telling you that
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  things are tough. You can't just always suppress it because I know that everybody wants to fast
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  forward through the breakdown and get to the part where you're stronger, where you've learned the
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  lesson, where you can tell this inspiring story about how you overcame. But you can't have the
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  resurrection without the death. You can't have the comeback without the setback and you definitely
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  can't have the breakthrough without the breakdown. The part, this part, the part where you're under
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  the covers, questioning everything stressed out, feeling like the world is too much. This isn't a
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  detour from your success story. This is a chapter in it. Remember every biography you've ever
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  read, any person you admire, they have multiple chapters like this. They're just usually compressed
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  into a single paragraph that starts with, well, it was during this period of intense doubt,
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  that dot, dot, dot. See, you're living that paragraph right now in real time. In real time is
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  slow and painful and full of uncertainty. But here's what those biographies also tell you.
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  The people who change things aren't the ones who never fell apart. They're the ones who fell
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  apart and discovered they could put themselves back together different and stronger, more honest
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  about what actually matters. So you have to accept this truth. You have to accept the truth that
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  you're not behind. You're not failing. You're not weak. You're just human doing inhuman things at
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  an inhuman pace with inhuman expectations. Your body is forcing you to stop because your mind won't.
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  Your soul is demanding rest because your ego won't allow it. And your breakdown is your wisdom
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  trying to save you from your ambition. So listen to it. The world will still be there when you're
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  ready to face it again. The opportunities will still exist and the work will still matter. But
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  none of it matters if you're not here to do it. So stay under those covers for as long as you need,
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  feel the weight of it all. Let yourself break completely because sometimes the only way out is
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  through. And sometimes through looks like three days in bed questioning everything before you
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  remember who you are and why you started. You've survived the worst day of your life so far.
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  You'll survive this one too. And when you finally do get up not because you have to but because
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  you're ready to, you'll realize something that changes everything. The weight that was crushing you,
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  you've been carrying it for so long you forgot you could put it down. Put it down. The world needs
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  what you're building. But first you need to remember that you're allowed to be human while you build
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  it. So get back up when you're ready. Not a second before. Bigger things are waiting but they'll
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  wait for you. They always do.