Are you in love with your struggle?

Are you in love with your struggle?

Welcome to the Self-Performance-Strategies (S-P-S) Newsletter 

Estimated read time 4-minutes:

Let’s jump in:

“You’re imperfect, and you’re wired for struggle, but you are worthy of love and belonging.”

- Brene Brown

Not everything has to be a struggle.

I played the wrong game in my 20s.

I went down the path of hedonism.

I didn’t want the path most of society was on.

Office jobs, cubicles, 9-5, retire at 65, play golf and die.

I still don’t want that path, but I would like to play more golf.

In my 20s, I struggled with knowing what I wanted.

I partied instead.

This led to me working paycheque to paycheque.

 Getting into a little bit of consumer debt.

Repeating the same year from 23-28.

I have talked about this before, but by age 29, I knew things had to change.

And change they did.

Something clicked. 

I wanted a better life, and I went after it.

I used my struggle years as fuel.

I looked back at my 20s and decided I could do better.

I felt behind compared to those in my age group.

But I made a mistake.

A mistake that took me years to undo.

What was that mistake?

I fell in love with the struggle.

My struggle became my identity.

I had this fire inside me.

I had this regret inside me.

It fuelled me to change my life.

However, it had serious limitations.

The struggle to catch up to my peers put me in a constant state of chasing.

I wanted more money.

I wanted a better job.

I wanted more freedom.

But I wanted all of these things to fill an emotional hole.

Now, there were good things to come out of this period.

I started working out more.

I started meditating and journaling.

I started learning high-leverage skills like leadership and sales.

Funnily enough, I did make more money, but it was not enough

I did get a better job, but I wanted a better one.

I created more freedom, but I wanted more.

The struggle continued. 

Everything was a fight.

It was me against the world.

I went from $14.95 an hour to 6-figure leadership roles in a matter of years.

In 2016, I created social media accounts under the name Struggling To Succeed.

I loved my struggle so much I made it a focal point of my daily thinking.

My Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram were called Struggling To Succeed for over 3 years.

 I posted over 100 YouTube videos on the idea that you had to struggle to succeed.

Here is my 1st video on Youtube, posted in January 2017:

It makes me cringe to watch.

It was the 1st ever public post I had made, pushing myself in the direction I wanted.

I am glad I did it.

But did it all have to be a struggle?

No, it did not.

It wasn’t until the summer of 2020 while growing my Twitter, people started to point out that using the word struggle is limiting.

Not only for attracting followers, but also for the mindset of succeeding in business and life.

And they were right.

I changed to Success Theory that summer and switched to my name in June this year.

It took me around 4 years to drop this conscious and subconscious idea that struggle is part of the process. 

My Twitter following blew up when I did this in the summer of 2020.

And by spring 2021, I had enough confidence to leave my corporate role to start my own coaching business.

Now, 18 months later and over a dozen successful client testimonials, have I gotten over the struggle?

Mostly.

When you install an idea so deep into your personality for years, it can be challenging to remove it.

I did struggle with removing the struggle.

Yes, I know how that sounds, haha.

The breakthrough came with a combination of ideas.

The one with the most impact was using the concept of The Gap and The Gain by Dan Sullivan.

I first came across this concept in 2015 or 2016 while listening to Dan on a podcast.

 But I didn’t fully connect or deeply understand the concept until I read the book of the same name by Dan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy in 2021.

 Let’s take a look at it:

From Dan’s experience, coaching some of the highest-level entrepreneurs in the world for the last 40 years, he has seen that most people, especially highly ambitious people, are unhappy.

Because of how they measure their progress.

This was the trap my struggle had led me to fall into too.

We all have an ideal future.
But this ideal future is a moving target.
When we chase after it, it will always be out of reach.

Measuring yourself against the ideal creates the struggle.
There is a gap between what we have and what we want.

When you flip the model and measure yourself against your previous self, you see your wins or, as Dan puts it, your gains.

The thing was…

My whole mental setup was around struggling to succeed.
It was based around struggling to reach the next goal.

Man, this hit hard.

When I first heard about this concept, it helped me see my past as a gain.

It made me view all of my past as positive.
It gave me the confidence to see I had achieved a lot and could achieve more.

But when I read the book and took a deeper look at this model, I realized something life-changing.

Most of my goals were gap goals.

My motivation for setting those goals was from the wrong framing.

I realized I had many “when I have <insert result> I will be happy” goals.

Now, working towards a bigger, better future is essential, and we should all do this.

But we should expand into that future from the foundations of success, satisfaction, optimism, and confidence.

When you expect things to be a struggle
When you expect things to be a chase
When you put pressure on yourself to catch up

You’re in the Gap.

Over the last 18 months, I have helped my business owner clients and myself navigate the struggle and avoid falling into the gap.

As a high-achiever, you want more out of life.

You choose big challenging targets outside of your comfort zone.

The problem with doing hard things is that they are hard to do.

But doing hard things doesn’t have to be a negative struggle.

Some people say the struggle is where greatness is born.
I now believe that living in the gain is where greatness is born.

Here are 5 frameworks you can use to avoid the struggle and live in gain:

Be intentional:
Make sure you have a why and reason behind your goals.

Making more money is fun, but why are you making that money?

Are you doing it to make numbers look good on a screen or to use the capital to improve your life?

When you chase goals for hollow reasons, you are left feeling hollow.

So you think more money will make you less hollow.

This is gap thinking.

You are chasing and not being intentional.

Focus on the wins:
What you focus on, you create.

If you focus on the negative, you will create more negativity.

If you are chasing goals, you will never catch them.

Focus daily on the progress you’re making.

Record your wins and look for the lessons.

Don’t fixate on the negative.

Create your own luck:
If you are consistent, your daily efforts will turn into results.

Stopping and starting habits and systems removes momentum.

This puts you in a constant state of struggle and frustration.

Create luck in your business by sticking with key habits daily.

Setbacks will happen:
Don’t take failure personally.

Everyone makes thousands of mistakes.

If you attach your self-worth to those mistakes, you will struggle to learn, adapt, and try again.

The gap wants you to focus on those makes.

The gain wants you to evaluate the results and test new ideas.

Find whos:
Don’t put it all on your shoulders.

Hire a coach, a VA, or an expert.

Find people who can help you achieve your goals.

Doing everything might suffice when 1st starting out.

But you must delegate the right tasks to the right people at a certain point.

If you attempt to always do everything yourself, you invite struggle into your life.

I hope you can use the ideas in this week’s letter to struggle less and succeed more.

Big love.
Make it a great one,
Stephen


P.S. I partner with business owners to help them take action faster and with less friction.

Hit the link below to the PRO-Accelerator to find out more: