In my last newsletter about burnout, I talked about 5 strategies I used to overcome my debilitating burnout - from therapy to cold immersion to having a feline companion. After my recovery, however, I hadn't fully internalized the painful lesson. This week the saga continues and I talk about why I decided to keep going, the role of ego and why we never learn the first time.
1/ Ego is the enemy
I never had any allergies growing up. Peanuts, eggs, shellfish. You could blend them all together and make me a nasty smoothie. I'd be totally fine. But a few years ago, I'd developed an allergy that I was completely unaware of. I was allergic to failure, and the trigger was my ego.
When I told my mom about my burnout with droopy eyes and a depressed voice, she commented that I didn't seem very happy. She suggested that perhaps it was time to quit and try something else. "No way," my ego spoke, taking control of my body like a parasitic worm. "I just didn't do things right. I can do better." It's one of the few times I wish my mom would have slapped me, but instead she just smiled, knowingly.
A healthy ego is aware of its own limitations and is open to feedback and learning from others. Even though I said that "I love feedback!" and tried to instill a feedback culture in my startup, I tended to stonewall people when they gave me the tough feedback I needed.
On one occasion, I spoke to an entrepreneur who gave me several examples of why my business model wouldn't work, and shared the names of other startups that tried to do the same thing. I ignored him and took it as a challenge to prove him wrong, without doing the necessary due diligence into seeing if he had any valid points.
One reason I believe my ego became overinflated is because my desire to build the business wasn't totally my own — it was "mimetic." I had an image of what it meant to be an entrepreneur and what I should be doing, even though I wasn't totally enjoying it.
Mimetic desire is when we want something because someone else has it. It's not about our own needs or wants, but about wanting to have what someone else has. This can be fueled by envy and a feeling of inadequacy. It can lead to competition and conflict as we try to one-up each other and get what others have.
The opposite of mimetic desire might be called self-sufficient desire or intrinsic desire. This is when we want something because of our own needs and wants, not because someone else has it. It's more authentic and genuine, not influenced by external factors or the desires of others. This, in turn, is less likely to result in envy or caring about competition. As I'm writing these words, for example, I don't care about other writers or newsletters, and am simply enjoying it.
At the time, I took a lot of things related to my startup personally. As the days went by, I became more combative, aggressive and competitive. There's a few ways that this egocentricity played out:
Refusing to listen to feedback or criticism — ignoring my mom, mentors and advisors, people smarter than me (I'll get to that)
Struggling with failure — not throwing in the towel when perhaps I should have
Struggling to collaborate — getting impatient with some of my team
Being inflexible — not taking opportunities that I could have, like joining an accelerator program
Struggling with humility – thinking that I am special and can beat the odds of 95%+ startup failure
I saw these patterns appearing in me time and time again. Of course, I shouldn't be too hard on myself. I did a lot of good things, too, and I wasn't totally ego-driven. I was able to recognize the achievements of others and often gave praise to my team. I let go of tasks and when I hired someone I put my full trust in others without trying to micromanage them. I collaborated with the team and was open to changing our business model, depending on who was giving me the feedback and how it was given.
But more often than not, the ego would creep back in during important inflection points that would change the trajectory of my life — for the worse.
2/ Stockholm syndrome
When I returned from my recovery trip and was back home in the Netherlands, I felt fresh as a daisy. My energy was restored and my brain was firing on all cylinders. I made another mistake that I tended to repeat a lot. When my body and mind felt good, I would throw aside considerations of further consequences and proclaim invincibility. I liked to play with fire.
Naturally, I then made a genius decision:
I will continue working on the same startup. With the same remote setup. With the same people. With the same product. I will find a way to make it work.
After hearing about the severity of my symptoms in previous newsletters, you'd think it would be a better idea to just drop the whole startup thing and find an easier job as I adjusted my work habits. You may question my logic, and I wish someone would have at that time. But they didn't. I was fully responsible for myself, and I made the choice to keep going.
And then this happened:
In truth, there was a bit of Stockholm syndrome — a coping mechanism to a captive or abusive situation. I felt trapped by my situation. I'd moved to a new country, I had two co-founders and a small team, and quitting didn't seem like an option. What else would I do?
And yet, I kind of liked the pain. The story had the potential to sound cool: 'startup founder wrecks his brain and then goes on to build a successful business.' It seemed like a rite of passage. I was a dreamer, and still am. It would be silly to stop now, since I'd gone through the worst. Besides, we were getting a little bit of traction in the product. There was a sliver of hope.
Now that I'd "recovered," surely I wouldn't make the same mistakes again.
3/ The unspoken feeling
Something lurked in the background. What was it?
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