You're not broken for a lack of willpower
TL;DR:
Comparison kills willpower, but so does ignoring your own reality. When the grind stops working, you have four exits: quit with dignity, push through, get outside help, or go inward and find the voice that makes your work undeniably yours.
The honey badger (Mellivora capensis) is known to be one of the fiercest battlers in the animal kingdom, going up against predators 10x their size. One of the reasons behind their incredible willpower is the fact that they must be successful, otherwise they would face extinction.
Their lives are on the line.
You might experience the same pressure when you’re building a business or trying to stay afloat amongst the waves of capitalism. When you start out, it’s like the battle between David and Goliath and you’re never Goliath.
If you’re currently fighting a battle like never before, I offer free intro calls to see how I can support you.
As days keep running forward you’ll start to doubt your abilities and circumstance to understand why results are not translated from plans (dreams?) to reality. That recurring doubt will result in a loss of willpower, no matter where your benchmark was. But that’s natural.
Hustle culture and broadcast achievements tell us we are behind. We all know that’s a lie but keep believing it anyway.
Understand Your Benchmark
We're all different. This sentence is so universally overused that I shouldn't even mention it — living by it should be natural, but comparison is mischievous.
Starting out, you barely have any idea how to become successful, so you try to learn from those who made it already and you quietly make it into a comforting trap by copy-pasting their methods and trying to make it look like it's yours.
What's left out of this equation is seeing and feeling what it took for those who are already successful, because no behind-the-scenes metrics or vlogs can show you what it actually feels like to live the process. By now you probably know that it's exhausting, to say the least. But that's the point.
As long as you don't experience it yourself, you'll never know — and you should face harsh reality as soon as you can to see what actually makes sense for you.
Chances are your life is entirely different from those you keep measuring against. Let's see my example. I'm a husband and a father, so I just cannot possibly hustle as hard as someone who lives a solitary life, because I try to remain as involved in my child's life as possible. At the same time, I for sure have more "free" time compared to a family with 5 children. Night and day differences.
Disconnected Reality
The problem is that we were made to believe that success might happen fast. But is it truly others' fault? Wasn't it our mind all along? The answer is that we never knew. We heard stories that made us believe without the experience. And experience is usually as cold and hard as ground in winter.
There's nothing comforting about that.
As we hit the ground, the experience will affect willpower because as our mind tries to keep us safe, it will make an effort to push us into a path that has less pushback, an easier way out. Suddenly everything that made you excited and energized before will feel like a drag. Earlier you were inspired within minutes, now you keep doomscrolling and say everyone has better ideas than you.
Please know, you're not broken, you've arrived at reality.
Refueling Willpower
There are four things (at least!) you can try, right now, and every one of them starts the same: stop comparing yourself to others and offer yourself the grace that you're building what you once dreamed about and it takes longer than you expected.
First path: you can always pull the plug and return to a previous safety. It might sound like failure but it's way better than total defeat. Live to fight another day — clichés are true but unglamorous. Know that it's okay.
Second path: endure. As established, there's a bigger gap between building and becoming successful than most think and that makes willpower evaporate faster than water from a desert under midday sun. There's no way to sugarcoat it. The danger is not to burn yourself out in the process by neglecting your basic needs for rest, for example. It's only you who can look out for yourself, please take care of your mental and physical health. You'll need those on your marathon.
Third path: reach out to a consultant. Your industry is full of advisors who are selling boxed offers where they guarantee your success using their methods. You can probably and maybe should try them if you never did. It'll offer you peace of mind but might keep you trapped within the same loop, because you'll lack the part of building yourself and learning what truly works for you.
Fourth path: focus on your personal development instead, not neglecting your business, of course. Seems counterintuitive, right? The funny thing — you might not know yet — is that success and your willpower depend on your unique voice, the reason behind why you do what you do. Once you reconnect to yourself and become brave enough to infuse your uniqueness into whatever you do, like-minded people will see themselves in your reflection. If you're wondering how to achieve being true to yourself, I work with your peers already to help them. You can also book your free intro call when you feel ready.
It’s perfectly okay to ask for support. You don’t have to figure everything out on your own. While I believe everyone is their own best expert, I’m also a big believer in asking for help to create change together. It’s comforting to have someone by our side as we go through transitions. If you’re feeling motivated to expand your comfort zone and curious about how I can support you on your journey, let’s talk.
Some career decisions get clearer with distance — others need a second perspective to actually move. Online career coaching can be that second perspective.
