The Trough of Sorrow

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One of the things I like most about writing a personal development blog is I get to write about new tips and tricks I’ve found. Part of the fun is finding nuggets of advice from the things around me from friends to movies and everything in between. Then I get to write them down, not only for myself but, to share with anyone interested in reading what I have to say. Every time I find something to write about I find several other follow up posts as well.

I’m not just taking things I’ve found, repackaging the content, and turning it into a post but I try my advice. This has led to some interesting little experiments and new things I enjoy doing. Wim Hof’s breathing practice, meditation, and journaling are a few things I enjoy doing.

The problem with personal development is it can be overwhelming. There’s always something new to do, new to try, and a new variation on an old idea. There are so many people out there trying to help it’s easy to feel overloaded. I know for me, the more I read, the more I want to implement all at once, and the more I fail. Working on two-week experiments are great, in theory, but it can be difficult to implement in real life, especially when there’s so much to try.

As anyone who’s tried making a New Year’s Resolution, the easy part is starting, but once the real work begins it’s easy overwhelmed, disappointed, and quit. Initially, we are riding high and are untouchable. Soon we hit a speed bump and we start to wobble. After experiencing this amazing high from our life changing idea, we feel the depressive low from the wobble. Few speed bumps later, and we throw in the towel because we “can’t” do it.

What happened? How did we go from “I’m on top of the world to my life sucks” and “I’ll never accomplish anything?” We’ve landed in the “Trough of Sorrow.”

“What is this fancy, nonsense term you’re using this time, Joe?” The trough of sorrow is a term coined by Y Combinator founder Paul Graham, and his partners, to explain the point in a start-up’s life cycle where the “new car smell” wears off and the real work begins. As seen in the diagram, first start-up founders get excited about how they will change the world. Then the novelty dies off and all they are left is the grind of making it work. Sometimes a start-up can spend years in the trough waiting to see if their idea will work. This is where most start-ups either persevere, pivot from their original idea, or quit completely.

The trough of sorrow is what we experience when life gets in the way of our personal development goals. We miss a day or two working on our new habit or skill and we start to spiral. Soon a day turns into a week, turns into a month, and turns into forever. We’ve failed so we must be failures, right?

This has been the issue I’ve had the last several months. I’ve started and quit several habit changes and projects in the last several months. Every time I try to start something new life gets in the way, I hit a few speed bumps, and I give up. When I hit the trough of sorrow, I tend to hit it HARD. I try to take on too much all at once and wind up sucking at everything until I give up and feel like a failure. Not the good kind where I learn from my experiences but the bad one who throws himself a pity party.

Most days, all I really want to do is hide under my desk or go full Emo, crying alone in the corner of a dark room. I feel sorry for myself because my expectations are not matching up with reality. I suck and there’s nothing I can do about it.

This is why I wanted to write this post. I want to show I still have a long way to go in my personal development journey and I’m writing these posts to help me as much as I want to help others. Somethings I need to remind myself I am doing a good job, my feelings are normal, and I’m not the only one going through this situation. Here are some things I plan on using to help get me out of the trough of sorrow:

Dealing with the Trough of Sorrow

Concentrating on our Emotions:

Many times, we feel like we are the only ones who are failing horribly. We see friends and influencers on social media showing us their perfect little lives and it’s easy to ask ourselves, “what’s wrong with me?” The thing is we all go through the trough of sorrow. Everyone has their low points.

We need to remember change is difficult. It is were easy everyone would be doing it all the time. We are going to fail time and time again. It’s okay to fail, especially if we are willing to learn from our mistakes.

Steve Kamb of Nerd Fitness has a great article on starting over or, as he calls it, respawning. In it he suggests three steps to help us get closer to success when we decided to try something again.

Separate yourself form the Old You: Every time we start over we do it as a new person. It doesn’t matter what happened yesterday. It’s in the past. We can take what we’ve learned and put it towards making today a success. Today is a new day, we are new people, and we can do it
Capitalize on Momentum: Every time we start over we are filled with excitement and passion. We need to take this time to make plans and changes we will be forced to continue when we hit the trough.
Fail Differently: Now, we might not succeed in this attempt either but that’s okay. By doing things a little differently, this time, we will fail differently. This means we will learn more, which we can use for the next time we try again. The more we try, the more we learn, and the more likely we are to achieve our goals.

Working through our Problems:

Once the initial excitement of starting something new and we get to the trough it’s easy to get frustrated. It’s helpful to take some time here for introspection. We should ask ourselves why are we failing? What are the issues we are encountering? What is triggering our regression? Looking into why we are having issues allows us to plan around them.

A lack of or poor planning is another reason many of us stumble. Initially we get excited and dove right in. We knew what we want our end result to be, but we haven’t made a plan to get there. Since there’s isn’t a plan, we bail. When planning to start our new habit, skill, or project it’s important to think of these three things:

Keep it simple: Figure out the bare minimum we can do and still be successful
Celebrate Small Wins: Build small wins into the plan and celebrate them.
Build a Team: It’s important for us to have a team to help keep us accountable. Family, friends, co-workers, hire a coach, or find someone off the street. Anyone who will help us to keep going.

We must Perseverance:

When we start something new it’s easy to feel like we can take on the world. “Ain’t nobody gonna break my stride, ain’t nobody gonna slow me down. I’ve got to keep on movin’!” Then the resistance realizes we want to change the status quo and it freaks out. The resistance pushes us head first into the trough.

The resistance doesn’t want us to grow. It doesn’t want us to change. It tries to trick us into thinking we “can’t” do it and won’t make it. It knows one of our basic instincts when things get tough is to run away. In fact, it’s counting on it.

It’s not that we don’t want to change but it’s easy to feel “it’s not the right time.” Maybe I’ll let things in my life die down and start again. The problem is life rarely slows down and something always gets in the way. As cliché as it might sound, unfortunately, perseverance is the only way to get through the trough.

The thing to remember, no matter how many times we quit, start over, or try something new it will always be difficult. The trough of sorrow isn’t a unique or special circumstance. Being extremely passionate about a project, skill, or habit change doesn’t mean we will skip out on the struggles. The struggle will always be real, and we will need to deal with it, eventually. If we want to make real, lasting change we need to persevere when times get tough.

I think the important things to remember are we are not alone, it’s okay to fail and start over, it’s important to have a plan and a support network or group, and the only way past the trough of sorrow is through it. It’s never easy and we are going to stumble many times along the way. As long as we pick ourselves up and try again we will eventually make things happen.

Chen, Andrew. “After the Techcrunch bump: Life in the ‘Trough of Sorrow’”.

What is Your One Thing?

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As I may or may not have mentioned before, I have three children, one who is only 7 months old. This means my house is in a constant state of disarray. This tends to leave my wife and I extremely frustrated. No matter how much we try to clean up, it’s ruined quickly. It’s one step forward and two steps back.

Last weekend, I was complaining to a buddy about the house, and he gave me a strange but amazing piece of advice. He said, “pick one thing and make it YOUR thing.” Basically, pick one place in the house, whether it’s the bedroom, family room, toy room, kitchen, etc. and always ensure it is neat and clean. No matter how the rest of the house looks or what else is going on, I must ensure my “area” of the house is clean. No complaining just do it.

“Okay, Joe, what’s the big deal?” I think it’s an easy way to give us some semblance of order back in our lives. I know when I feel like my life is completely out of control it’s because I’m worried about too many things all at once. My wife, my kids, my job, my house, my friends, my future, and my world all at the same time. I feel like I’m on a treadmill. I’m going a mile a minute but I not getting anywhere.

Instead of trying to do everything, we need to pick one thing and make it OUR thing. The important thing is to make it small and manageable. Picking too large of a “thing” can be a one-way ticket to Overwhelmsville.

Going back to my conversation about my house, I decided to ensure the dishes are clean and put away every single night. This gives me a base of operations while allowing me to feel like I made a difference by accomplishing something. Then if there is time or if feeling especially frisky I can expand to the rest of the house.

This prevents cherry picking and the “what do I feel like today” mentality. Whenever it’s time to clean the house, I know where I’m starting. Basically, I’ve eliminated the choice of where to start reducing my need to use willpower. Now I’m able to be more effective in the house.

Why is keeping my house clean so difficult? Is it because I’m a slob, I have 3 kids, or own more things than necessary? Probably all of them. The other problem is, by the time I get home, at the end of the day I’m exhausted. Sure, I spend most of my day sitting in a chair staring at a computer screen but mentally, I have very little left in me. I’m all out of willpower.

We’ve all had those days where we know what we should be doing but we don’t have the energy or drive to make it happen. Instead of cleaning or working on a project, we procrastinate because we don’t have the willpower. We feel weak and lazy.

The thing is our willpower is like a glass of water. Every time we make a decision or “force” ourselves to do something, the cup gets drained a little. The more energy we expend making decisions, both conscious and unconscious, the fast cup empties and until we feel overwhelmed. This leads to what researchers call decision fatigue.

There are several ways to help combat decision fatigue. James Clear gives us 5 ways to combat decision fatigue and SJ Scott gives us a few more, with 9 ways. Two of the points they agree upon are making important decisions ahead of time and simplifying the process. The idea of “pick one thing and make it YOUR thing” is an amalgamation of these two ideas. We’ve decided what we are going to do (in this case it’s focusing on keeping the dishes clean) and we’ve kept it small and manageable (concentrating only on the dishes and the sink area). Now whenever it’s time to get to work we don’t need to guess, we know where to start.

The trick is to understand our priorities. What do we care about the most? What can we concentrate on which will reduce our stress exponentially? What are the things we dread doing the most? These are the things we need to work on first. Then when we’ve created the list of our top priorities, we figure out which is number one and start there. This becomes our thing.

Now we aren’t reliant on willpower to push us into action. We know what we need to do, and we can do it. It’s our top priority after all.

I know I’ve talked a lot about my house and my kitchen but the nice thing about this idea is it can work for most things. Dinners, the kids, job functions, and even friends and family. By developing priorities for the major stressors in our lives, we can pick out thing to become our thing. Once we finish our thing, we can move on to the next thing.

This implementation will take time and practice. I’ve been at this for almost a week and I’ve failed more often than not. The important thing is to keep trying and work to continuously ensure it’s the priority. We already know what we have to do, we just need to execute. So, let’s find out thing, make it our thing, and go kick ass together.

The Reverse Bucket List: We are Cooler than We Think!

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What are all the things I want to do before I die? What is on my bucket list? This is a fairly common question we have nowadays. We think about the future, what it holds, and how can we get there? It can be extremely fun an exciting to dream about what’s in store for us, but it has a tendency to fill us with dread. What if I’m stuck where I am? What if I never amount to anything? What if my bucket list goes unchecked?

It can be exhausting thinking about “what ifs.” As a species, human-beings are horrible at predicting the future. We make educated guesses but unfortunately, the only real certainty in life is death.

Then there are the times we reflect on our past focusing on failures and regrets. How often do we wish we did things differently? It can be a lot for us to think about and, if we aren’t careful, it can consume us, causing major depression.

“Wow, Joe, this really sound like it is going to be one of those uplifting posts, isn’t it?” Hold on a second. I’m getting there. Stick with me here.

Why should we let the past and future haunt us? Sure, we’ve all made decisions we would probably change or aren’t proud of things we’ve done. But what about all the good things in our life? What about all the times we’ve kicked ass and taking names? The times we were the Liam Neesoned of our lives, throat chopping everything in sight?

As I wrote about on Tuesday, a gratitude journal is a great place to start. Writing down things we are grateful for, each day, is a great way to focus on the positive instead of the negative. It also prevents us from taking the simple things for granted. Did the car start on the first try or our kids ran to give us a hug when we got home from work? They might be normal occurrences but can be easily taken for granted.

What about the long-term regret? What about all the times we messed up zigging instead of zagging? These thoughts can easily sucker us into negative thinking, followed by the inevitable pity party.

The Reverse Bucket List:

When we need a little positivity in our lives we can turn to the Reverse Bucket list. This is an idea I’m borrowing from a newsletter by the author Chris Guillebeau. As he says, “If a bucket list is all about dreaming of something you might do one day, the Reverse Bucket List is all about recognizing what you’ve already done.” Thankfully, the process is easy to replicate.

Block out about 10-15 minutes of alone time and prevent any possible distractions (phones, TV, the internet, etc.). We are taking this time to reflect on our life to answer these three simple questions:

What are we proud of?
What have we accomplished?
What was challenging or scary… but we did it anyway?

These questions don’t need to be answered separately. Since the questions are so similar many of the answers will overlap. The important thing is to remember all the cool things we’ve done and experienced in our lives. Maybe we’ve never jumped out of an airplane, but we’ve spent several days hiking the Appalachian Trail. (for the record, I’ve done neither… yet!)

Much like the gratitude journal, this allows us to focus on the positive in our lives rather than the negative. It can help us realize, especially when we are feeling down and worthless, we’ve done some cool and interesting things others wish they could do. Or there might be something we think is no big deal but someone else thinks it is awesome/crazy.

“What about you, Joe? What are your answers to the questions?” Good Question! One of my major accomplishments was complete Navy Boot Camp. It was both challenging and scary (you can ask my parents about their thoughts), but I made it through to the end. There were even a few times I could have easily gotten out of my contract and gone home, but I chose to stay.

My problem is I’ve never seen completing boot camp as a big deal. Joining the Navy was never a choice for me but something I had to do. Much like someone being called into the religious service, I was pulled to become a Sailor. While boot camp sucked, the only way I EVER thought I could get out was straight through to the end.

Going through the reverse bucket list process helped me realize it was a big deal and something I should be proud of completing. I regularly hear from people, “I could never join the military. It’s too ‘Fill In The Blank HERE’!” It might not be a big deal for me but for others it’s unfathomable.

It’s important to remember this when we work on our own reverse bucket list. Time tends to downplay how difficult things seem, and it can be easily forgotten or disregarded. If we get stuck we can ask ourselves the question, “What would other people think if we told them we did ‘x’?” (This is meant to be a useful tool when we get stuck and not to measure our accomplishments against others.)

Remember, even some of our smallest accomplishments can give us the greatest sense of pride. Focusing on the times we stepped out of our comfort zone, tried something new, or did something a little different can easily change the way we feel about ourselves. So, let’s take some time this weekend to write our own reverse bucket list. We might find out we are cooler than we think.

Gaining Prospective with Gratitude

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I realized recently, I have a problem. (No comments from the peanut gallery). It started when I read Walden on Wheels. The further I got into the book the happier I realized the author, Ken Ilgunas, was becoming and, the crazy part was, by the end of the book, he didn’t have much of anything. He had a beat up Econoline Van, some clothes, and other random possession. From the outside looking in he looked like a hobo, a vagabond, or a shifty lay about with no dreams or ambitions. Funny thing is, he couldn’t have been happier. He had nothing and everything all at once. He had freedom.

By the end of the book, I found myself dreaming of being Ken. I wanted his adventures, his determination, and his grit. He’d did what I could only imagine. He got an idea in his head and was determined to see it through to the end. He was the poor man’s Richard Branson (and I mean this as an amazing compliment).

As I read, I wondered what lessons I could learn from Ken. He had a certain “Je Ne Sais Quoi” about him and I needed to figure out his secret. My mind traveled back to my single days and the thought of moving into a van to drive cross-country. Having a family I love, however, made these continued thoughts a little difficult.

It recently hit me like a ton of bricks. I’ve been extremely ungrateful lately. Here I was wishing I was someone else when I had a wonderful life around me. My perspective was all wrong and it needed a change.

It tends to be a cyclical problem. Every so often I realize I’m significantly unhappier and more frustrated than is healthy. I find I needed a reality shift. I needed to change the way I think about my life. I needed to be more grateful for my life.

The Gratitude Journal:

Being grateful, for all the good in my life, isn’t easy for me. I tend to be a “glass half empty” kind of person. If I’m stuck in traffic due to a traffic accident I become angry for the delay instead of being grateful I’m not in the wreck. Why should I be grateful though, the universe is out to get me, right?

The unfortunate part of this level of thinking is it makes it more difficult to enjoy the good moments. Had a good weekend with the family? It gets overshadowed by the impending thought of work on Monday. Go out for a drink with friends? The focus is on the amount of money we spend or the hangover and not the quality time we spend with them. It doesn’t stop here. Work is always terrible, our spouse and kids are a pain, we don’t have enough time to ourselves, and everything is awful.

This is why I started my gratitude journal. Every night before I go to bed I write down 10 things I’m grateful happen during the day. This can be anything big or small. It could be something as simple as enjoying my breakfast to something epic like winning the lottery (though I’m not sure I’d need a gratitude journal if I won the lottery), to anything in between. The important thing is to write down at least 10 gratitudes for the day.

“10 sounds like a lot, Joe. Why so many?” Good question. I borrowed the idea from James Altucher and his writing on becoming an idea machine. Here’s why the number 10 is so important. Most people can easily come up with three things they are grateful for each day. Coming up with 4-5 becomes a little more difficult. Gratitude numbers 6-10 really makes the brain sweat. It forces us to really think about our day and find the little things we can appreciate. Maybe it’s a much-needed hug or an unanticipated thank you. It’s about digging deep.

The journal can be on anything. It can be a notebook, on the computer, on our smartphone, on a scrap piece of paper, or taking time to reflect on the day and come up with 10 in our head. This list can be a onetime thing or be saved to reflect on later. Personally, I use Google Docs on my phone and save each one I write. This allows me to put gratitudes in my phone throughout the day I want to reflect on later.

Here’s an example. Monday my wife reminded me, right as I was walking out the door for work, we needed to bring snack to preschool for my middle son. I was pissed she didn’t remind me sooner. We had all weekend and I could have found time this morning. Now I’m going to be late for work.

After taking time to cool down I realized two things. First, I’m grateful she remembered in enough time for me to help her out. Having to get two kids to school with a baby and having to stop by the store would be extremely difficult for her. Second, I’m grateful I have a boss who’s understanding and was okay with me being late. I was able to turn a negative into two positives. (Did I use them? Of course, I did. Waste not, want not!)

If it wasn’t for my gratitude journal I could still be bitter about it. This would create resentment which isn’t healthy in any relationship. Now I get to be thankful I have a wife who remembered and an understanding boss.

This is why this practice is crucial. There is so much going on in our lives it can be easy to forget about all the little moments which brightened our day. Most of us have plenty to be grateful for, starting with waking up each morning. As my Dad likes to say, “I woke up this morning and put my hand out to the left. Then put my hand out to the right. When it didn’t hit wood from the coffin, I knew it would be a good day.” While it can be a little embarrassing, as a teenager, to hear your Dad make this comment to strangers, I think it’s an incredibly powerful statement. We should be grateful we’re alive because the alternative doesn’t sound pleasant.

I’m not saying we aren’t allowed to be sad or unhappy. Of course, we are but focusing too much on the negative can be detrimental to our health. It’s amazing how a little practical optimism can go a long way. At the very least it helps keep things in perspective.

Don’t think it will do you any good? Try writing done 10 gratitudes every night for two weeks and see what happens. I’m certain it will make a different. Enjoy.