Highlights
- Conflict is part of every story, every narrative. It’s baked into most things worth doing.
- We accept success and fulfillment when it comes. We should accept their prerequisites: conflict, discomfort, and feelings of pessimism.
Introduction
Two weeks ago, you were jacked up — ready to attack a new project.
Now, all of the sudden, you want to give up.
You couldn’t stop thinking about some project. It might be an entrepreneurial venture, a potential side hustle or some other meaningful work. But now you’re starting to put shovels in the ground, maybe literally. And that initial good vibe is faltering.
You’re thinking about bailing out.
Self-doubt is all but absent at the start of the project. You’re doing the easy bits. You’re not considering the substantive work itself.
That kind of pessimism sets in when you start running into those obstacles. When you’re into the “grind it out” portion of the project. The unsexy bit. You’re building. You’re creating.
It’s conflict – an inescapable component of meaningful work.
It’s also a natural feature of change. We’ve evolved to experience internal friction when presented with change for any number of reasons. Comfort and familiarity represent safety. Change represents risk.
Despite this awareness, here we are. We’re past the initial fun phase and we’re now into the work.
And our minds – beginning to enter crisis aversion mode – feel like they’re googling PR firms to set up an off-ramp to bail on the project. An off-ramp that will allow us to preserve our pride and self-image, of course. (To be further explored in a future post.)
This pattern is all too familiar to me. I found it helpful to discover that this cycle is incredibly common. And predictable.
If it’s predictable, then we can prepare for it. Let’s take a look.
The Emotional Cycle of Change
In my last blog post, I spoke about how I need to better recognize how good feelings follow from meaningful work – activities that feel purposeful to me. I want to cement that neural connection in my brain.
The hope is that by doing so I can incentivize and grease my cognitive wheels to make taking on that work easier. This can then lead to more feeling good, and so on.
With a bit of scrutiny, I think that idea is naive. I don’t think I can hack my brain to make doing hard work feel not like doing hard work. That friction is an inherent feature.
I hope to explore ways to soften the pessimism that friction can bring about. However, conflict is part of every story, every narrative. It’s part of every venture that you want to take on. It’s baked into most things worth doing.
By recognizing the pattern, maybe we can grow an appreciation for that stage of the work.
Cycles or waves are a feature of many things. Sound, light, financial markets, and, even change, more broadly.
So when we consider change, our emotions follow a natural flow and pattern when acclimatizing to that change.
Included in the 1979 Handbook for Group Facilitators, Don Kelley and Daryl Conner developed the Emotional Cycle of Change. You may have seen something similar, but what you find below is a riff on that work.
The cycle helps us visualize how we adapt to change. And important, what we may expect en route to fulfillment.
Stages 1 through 5 are marked with points. They are: Uninformed optimism, informed pessimism, valley of despair, informed optimism, and success and fulfillment, respectfully.
The literature suggests the vast majority of us cycle between 1 and 3.
We have an idea. Get motivated. Do some stuff. Run into a bit of friction. We start to question ourselves, our motivation. In short, pessimism creeps in.
We settle into the so-called valley of despair.
I tend to do two things in this valley. First, I rationalize a way out that will protect my identity. This usually involves conjuring up a “valid” reason for why I’m about to quit. “I have kids. They’re the priority. I’m busy. I have limited time. And who’s going to read this anyway?” After I prepare my ego for a soft landing, I do the second thing: I quit.
Likely inspired by David Goggins screaming at me in a YouTube short, last spring, I became motivated to do something hard (for me). I laced up my runners and ran 10k. (I’ve never even run 5k, I don’t think. I’m not a runner.)
Two days later, it was time to run again because I had committed to doing so.
I ran into an issue though: my knees were dead.
Well, not dead, but I could barely bend them to get my shoes on. I walked up and down stairs like a double-peg-legged pirate.
Despite this, Goggins was back in my head:
“F*** your knees, you little b****!”
Alright, Mr. Goggins. You’re right. Let’s roll.
So, I did. Off I went. (And he was right, I did f*** my knees.)
I was in pain for a week. My knees were bugging out – tons of inflammation, dark bruises and all.
I let myself heal up, figured that my knees weren’t designed for running, and then I quit. I closed the book on my efforts to become a more regular runner. I entered the valley of despair after doing some real work and after running into some metaphorical, and physiological friction, I bailed.
(I pivoted to weight training which I still prioritize. I’m happy to have had that experience. I learned a lot.)
What can be done?
Some folks live in that valley of despair. They are at home there. People like David Goggins, for one. He and others may have strategies that can make the valley more manageable.
I’ll briefly offer my non-superhuman perspective.
The valley of despair is an essential (and inevitable) component of the larger cycle.
We accept success and fulfillment when it comes. We should also accept their prerequisites: conflict, discomfort, and feelings of pessimism. They go together. Yin and yang.
I’m trying three things to better position myself to manage the valley of despair in an effort to reduce the likelihood that I quit:
- I’m driving this mantra into my head: Fulfillment through friction.
- As I detailed in [this post], I’m going to fortify that link between feeling good and meaningful work
- I’m going to empower the energized version of myself that wanted to make some change in the first place. (At the start of a project, I can schedule an email to be sent to myself in the future that explains why this work is important to me. If I find myself pessimistic in a few weeks, receiving that email and being reminded of those reasons may help mitigate that creeping pessimism.)
Finally, our valleys will differ in depth and pitch. That is, some may get in and out of the valley in a couple of days. Others, no way.
This website, for instance. This habit of writing included a valley of despair that I’m still in. I’ve been here for three years.
Whatever you’re working on, I hope your stay down there is a little shorter. If you’re up for it, share something that you’re working on below.
Thanks for reading. 