Escaping the Valley of Despair
Level 4: Serious Player
Future Guardian,
I wrote a story once, about a character tempted by a demon.
The world of this story was limited, but the context was this character desperately wanted to achieve something in life.
The demon promised him all the things he wanted.
They were all at the top of a mountain.
The character didn't know how to climb the mountain but the demon gave him more and more tools. Each step he took up the mountain the demon gave him more gear, told him all the secrets, led him up the secret steps.
It's funny when I think on this story because even when I was writing it, I could only ever envision Homer Simpson climbing up The Murderhorn and Rainier Wolfcastle shouting about powersauce bars.
The end result is similar.
The character reaches the top and discovers ...
Nothing.
The demon vanishes.
And then the peak crumbles under his feet,
As he takes a long long fall down the mountainside.
The story I wrote was much lengthier, detailed, strung out the tension over several episodes, and was really all about setting up this one dynamic --
The long slow path out of The Valley of Despair
Because that's where the character falls into afterwards.
And that's the path most people take when they start something new. They work hard towards a particular goal, they are often tempted by outside influences, given secrets, led along a path, and then at some point,
They realize there's actually nothing there. What they thought would work didn't work. They don't know what they thought they did. The truth of the world and their life is vastly different.
And they fall down into The Valley of Despair.
Unless you completely give up and throw in the towel,
The inevitable question becomes ...
How the hell do I get OUT of the Valley of Despair?
The more you feel like you're in The Valley the more desperate you become to get out of The Valley. The feeling about this compounds because the longer you are in The Valley the less you feel like you can achieve and less you feel like you know and the less you feel like you are worth listening to and the less valid you can feel - Imposter syndrome piles on and you grind to a halt.
At this point most people will either somehow power through, or give up.
I'd like to give you some perspectives and tools to help you not only work through this point, but take your time and opportunity in The Valley to thrive and grow.
What is The Valley and How do I Escape?
One of the defining characteristics of being on top of Mount Stupid is a sense of being certain. That is, thinking that you know what you need to know, and either not realizing it or refusing to acknowledge that there are a lot of things you DON'T know.
Unsurprisingly then ...
We find that one of the defining characteristics of The Valley of Despair is uncertainty.
One of the ways this is triggered initially is discovering a huge knowledge gap. When you start off with something new, you likely get tuned into a singular focus on that thing. "Here's the best way to lose 50 pounds" - or whatever it is. A narrow focus, a narrow goal. Externally related and validated. You go in thinking "I'm going to lose 50 pounds if I just focus on this."
And you have this narrow intent focus on that outcome. And you push and you push and you push. And much of the time the outcome of your experience is that you don't get there and you start to wonder why and then at some point you realize ...
Oh.
There's so much more to know about this.
And all that time you were climbing Mount Stupid with a dead focused motivation to that outcome only to realize that not only do you know very little about getting the result that you desire, but the result you desire is actually different than you think and you now aren't even sure about that.
Huge drop.
Down into the valley.
That's why it's called Despair. That huge emotional drop.
So this can happen when you realize the massive gap in your knowledge and your experience. When you realize you actually don't know much of anything.
That realization gives rise to new challenges.
One of those being a significant tension of Authority.
So much of our world is wrapped around concepts of Authority1. When we are uncertain we seek out authority in order to tell us what to do. That authority reinforces that becoming an authority is what you need in order to have people follow what you say. Perspective of Authority feeds perspective of Authority and we get stuck in that loop.
Not just of seeing Authority to follow, but believing that we're only followable if we are ourselves an Authority. That includes being followable by our own selves - this is not the sole domain of entrepreneurs trying to build an audience.
Ever think that your idea about something is worthless because "I'm not an expert"?
That's the tension in the expectation of Authority, which appears once you realize you don't know things, but now how can you possibly proceed if your own ideas and experience can't even be listened to?
And then beyond yourself, if you DO have aspirations to lead others, teach others, have others listen to you and possibly buy things from you (if you're on that Entrepreneurial track) - how do you make that happen when you are in the Valley of Despair?
How can anyone follow YOU, if you're down in the valley?
How can you escape that valley as fast as possible so that you can keep moving forward?
Focus on your own action
You can start by breaking that perception of Authority. Instead of saying "this is how it is," start by saying "this is what I've experienced."
Because it's one thing to make a global declarative statement that encompasses everyone else and which inherently carries authority. "The best way to be consistently productive is to limit your planning to 3 things to do each day."
Compare that to, "For myself, I've found the 3 Lists2 method to be the most consistent and reliable tool for managing my day-to-day tasks and keeping me on track."
It's obvious when you see it.
What works for you may not work for other people. So instead of declaring it like a universal truth and essentially pretending we have Authority in the matter, we let go of the need to be correct and simply start from "this is what worked for me."
That is, after all, why we Engage the Field3.
When you say
"I did this and here's what happened" - that is inarguable truth.
Someone else can't come along and say YOU'RE WRONG!!!
Because ... hello ... it's what you did and it's what happened.
The meaning of that might be up for discussion, but because it's your life, YOUR engagement of the field, the only thing that matters here is how you reflect on the meaning, and that you then take more steps.
Work on being non-dogmatic
This is another one of those that is obvious when you see it in action, but becomes a lot more challenging to manage from within and to detangle from your every day habits of communication.
Being dogmatic4 in your viewpoint is believing there is one way to do something, or a "best" way to do something.
I'd wager that most of that sort of dogmatic communication and perspective comes out of a need to feel like we are smart, valid, and effective. If the way we're doing it is "the best" way, then that makes us feel superior.
Some of the dogmatic communication out there is an attempt to manipulate you into taking action. The tighter the lines are defined in a moment of persuasion, the easier it is to push you on either side of a line.
Dogmatism is a tool for climbing Mount Stupid. Rigid definition. Certainty.
In a world of uncertainty.
When you end up in The Valley of Despair, one of the ways you can work your way forward and out of it is to let go of dogmatism.
Recognize nobody knows what's going on
This is one of those weird truths that you always discover when you get to a certain point.
Like as a child you grow up and become a parent and then realize that your parents actually never really knew as much as they appeared to know. They were always just winging it. That's the same in every realm. Everyone is just doing the best that they can with the information and experience in front of them. And that "winging it" is unique to them based on their own reality.
Dissonance with this arises when you see other people projecting certainty, expertise, authority, certainty, out into the world as if they DO know whats going on. No matter how experienced, powerful, or important they appear to be ... they either have a really clear view of what works for them in the moment, or they are figuring it out, either way they are still winging it.
No matter how far you travel on the long path of life, every step reveals something new. New challenges, new ideas, new opportunities. Every step we take puts us constantly in the exact same position ...
Not really knowing what's going on.
But if you focus on those steps in front of you, it allows you to let go of that sense. IT doesn't matter if you don't know what's going on, as long as you have clarity on the next step to take and trust that you'll figure things out as you go.
Acknowledge the uncertain certainty
Dunning Krueger will crop up in everything you do. No matter how aware of it you are, no matter how experienced you are in life.
So one way you can manage your fall into the valley of despair which is inevitable (unless you give up on Mount Stupid), is to acknowledge going into anything new that if you ever feel certain about something, what you know for certain may not actually be certain.
Simply recognizing the things in yourself which you feel certain about and accepting that they may actually be uncertain will blunt the effect of the drop into the valley and make it much easier to continue. In many ways you can accelerate your path over Mt Stupid and into the valley sooner ... but more on that in a moment.
Be More Selective About What You Let In
When we're in the state of "being in The Valley," there's a particularly special weakness toward the external perspectives of others.
It's clearly a feature of climbing Mount Stupid, where we cling to certainty given to us by others and build on those dogmatic views towards an outcome until we reach the tipping point and the illusion breaks.
But when we've fallen down in the valley, that tendency to look toward external validation does not change.
There's a reason for that, which I'll touch on in a moment ...
But while our time climbing Mount Stupid is kind of a blind belief in someone else's point of view, perhaps shoehorned by dogmatic perspectives leading us to think there's only one path towards the success we desire ...
When we're in the valley and we're desperate to be NOT in the valley we can get into a state of wildly flinging about trying to grasp at anything that feels like a lifeline, which feels like a safety net that we can crab onto and use to pull ourselves out of that valley sooner than later.
(Again, more on that feeling in a moment)
This is another one of those points where you can set stopgaps for yourself. It isn't easy. Because it requires you to trust yourself at a point where trust in yourself may be at an all-time low (remember that's one of the features of falling into the valley - see the bit on Authority above).
Train yourself to be much more selective on what you let in to your world.
On who you listen to and what you take from them.
And especially on what you consider spending your resources to acquire.
Most of the time, for most people, it is true that you already know everything you need to know.
And what is missing isn't knowledge, understanding, or even clarity.
What's missing is taking your next little steps in the right direction, and continuing on the path that is right in front of you.
So,
If you find yourself looking out there for answers, use that as an opportunity to instead ask yourself:
What do I really need? What am I really missing?
If someone is offering you an enticing answer, one that feels like you really need, where you feel like you're going to miss out on all the future of your life if you don't take it ...
Ask yourself, do I really need this? How am I going to use this right now? How am I going to take advantage of this today?
Recognize in this that your tendency, if you really feel the desire for someone else's answer, someone else's thing that might have the secrets to you moving forward ... recognize that when you ask yourself those questions it's likely you're gonna try to find an excuse to say yes.
Instead, just find the way to feel good about letting go and not letting more in.
Because you already know what you need to know.
And you already know what you need to do.
That's to take the action with what you have, in your own life, to find the real answers you need which can only emerge from how you uniquely Engage the Field5.
Realize you only have 2 choices
Often times when we're in The Valley what we're ultimately struggling with is the internal battle between certainty and uncertainty.
The valley is the beginning of the long slow path of mastery of the thing you have begun. Sometimes you can spend seemingly a very long time in valley. Especially if you imagine being out of the valley as somewhere very far away.
That's ok.
But what the battle often comes down to is the fight between two choices.
You either DO
Or you DO NOT.
"People prefer the certainty of misery to the misery of uncertainty" - Virginia Satir
The certainty of misery when you're in the valley is doing nothing. Because you know exactly what life is going to be like if you decide to sit on the couch with a pint of ice cream and Netflix instead of doing the work.
As much as you may want to sink into doing nothing and getting high on dopamine ... you probably know that's not what you really want.
Yet it's a certain choice.
Taking the action you see before you, which most of us, if we're honest with ourselves, can clearly see the next few feet at least, is inherently UNCERTAIN.
So choose.
Do you take the path you know, do nothing, and nothing that you desire happens.
Or do you take the uncertain path, do the action, take the steps, and discover what could be?
When do you arrive out of The Valley?
One of the repeating themes I have observed in this path through The Valley, whenever people talk about it for themselves, and especially when they frame this dynamic for others to motivate them through The Valley (and especially when they are using that framing to sell something), they focus on the end point.
They focus on 'the arrival.'
They say, hey you passed Mount Stupid, it feels like you're failing and you're about to give up, but don't give up because now you're on the real climb and all you gotta do is climb out of the valley and then you will have arrived!
As if there is an end point achievement that you'll get to and then everything will change and you'll have everything you want in life and you won't ever have to worry about the challenge and the valley and the path anymore.
You know where that point actually lies?
It's at the very end.
Like, the very very very end.
Total and complete enlightenment.
When your spiritual consciousness transcends your physical form and you become one with the universe.
THAT is arriving.
I'm not suggesting that's your goal or that you get there.
I'm pointing out the fallacy in thinking you arrive anywhere in this life.
Because this physical life as we know it is not about arriving somewhere. It is, as we have often said, about the journey along the way.
And what we discover in this path of life is that we always have challenge.
Challenge never disappears.
It only changes.
You set one challenge for yourself, you start on a new path of mastery, you top over Mount Stupid, down into The Valley of Despair, you being your long slow climb of mastery, and then you're set on this path for life and now new challenges appear, and the challenge in that mastery changes.
Every time you 'accomplish' something a new goal appears after that one. A new challenge. A new direction.
This is the same experience every human goes through.
There's a REASON we avoid dealing with it ...
People don't like FAILURE
This may be one of the most notable and significant reasons why anyone avoids doing anything.
Easier to see perhaps when you can directly realize that you're avoiding doing something because you're afraid it won't go well.
Harder to see when you are presented with excellent logic and reasoning to NOT do a thing (especially when you come to these conclusions on your own), and therefore you now have a solid argument. I'm not avoiding this because I'm afraid of failure, I'm avoiding this because it's not the right thing for me to be doing.
You sure?
We have to be vigilant with our own perspective and our understanding, how we make choices about what we want, and how we approach tackling the challenges.
Whether we feel like we are afraid of failure or not it is beneficial to be aware that our human mindset is going to work very hard to avoid failure no matter what. And no matter how good you get at addressing that, it's never going to go away.
Not liking Failure is why we end up seeking validation from others. It's why we don't take microsteps when we could. It's why we don't go get our own data. Validation from others, and especially answers from others, allows us to outsource the part of our own experience that is most important, but which is also most likely to present us with that failure.
But Failure is also why we microstep. It's also why we gather our own data.
Think about it this way.
Failure is an inevitable part of trying things in life. You can't more forward and do new things without failing. You can't even do things you're very familiar with without sometimes failing. There are too many variables in life to control the outcome. You can only control the steps you take.
So if we know failure is certain, but we can't know when that failure is going to happen ...
Would you rather take giant leaps and experience giant failures?
Or take a lot of tiny steps and experience a lot of tiny failures?
The thing about failures is that it's all data. You can reframe the idea of what failure is if you want, but if you try something and it doesn't work, you get data around that action, which can inform your next step that can make that thing you tried more likely.
That data can also be easier to see and understand when you take smaller steps. When you take giant leaps and it doesn't work out, it's hard to tell what exactly did and didn't work and why. So micro-stepping forward reveals more failures, gives us more precise data faster, and allows us through the path to adapt and change quicker, getting us further in the direction we want to go sooner.
If you try to avoid failure,
By taking fewer steps,
That failure is still going to come, but it's going to be much more catastrophic - possibly "taking you out of the game" catastrophic.
As far as life and failure goes, those are really your two options.
You either make a bunch of tiny failures on the path towards what you want, or you avoid failure and build up to one catastrophic potentially game ending failure.
That all might sound ...
Rather doom and gloom,
But just think of it this way. Embracing a lot of little failures is a way to avoid the big game ending ones.
And in that way you can start walking your way out of The Valley one step at a time.
All that being said,
Let me suggest a different way of thinking about this ...
Embrace The Valley of Despair
Heres how I really like to think about The Valley of Despair.
You already know why we call it "Despair" - because it forms from the precipitous drop off Mount Stupid. It's the same emotional rise and fall we've seen in so many different forms.
You build up this expectation, it doesn't pan out, you collapse, and it feels terrible.
And remember that 1 bad emotion impacts you negatively *far more* than 1 good emotion impacts you positively. The greater the emotional rise, the harder the emotional fall.
So that's the initial frame,
But here's how I like to see it now.
Because it's not about The Mountain, it's not about The Valley, to me it's about that path of mastery that goes off into the distance forever.
That's what I'm ultimately interested in. Is the path of mastery in whatever I'm doing. The lifelong pursuit of craft and meaning and work.
That's the path you walk on to ultimately uncover your Full Potential6. Because that's the path you MUST walk on to reveal your Known Potential. Our known potential after all comes out of frequency of the thing we do best. And in order to get that frequency you must necessarily pass Mount Stupid and traverse The Valley.
It can't happen any other way.
I say all this because I've come to see The Valley as A GIFT.
You know when you're in the valley. Because you have those feelings of "I actually don't know shit" and "wow I can't believe I thought I knew what I was doing" and all those related ones.
You know because you struggle with that framing of Authority. Because you doubt your own skill and worth. Because you have imposter syndrome. Because you are intelligent and you can SEE that knowledge and experience gap that dropped you down in the valley and because you can see that you believe you can't possibly be worth listening to or following, that you can't possibly be as good as other people appear to be.
You know.
And instead of wallowing in The Valley,
Recognize the gift that you have been given.
You got past Mount Stupid.
The path in front of you isn't just any old path - it's the g#Adamn path of MASTERY.
That is THE path.
The one that, if ever it's appropriate to use the world "should," the one that you SHOULD walk. Assuming this is the path where your gifts lie, where you desire to be every day.
So use all the framing given above as tools to help you work through the doubt and the uncertainty. But also recognize that swimming that sea of that doubt and uncertainty formed in The Valley is the greatest opportunity you've had in life - because all of life that you desire is through this.
Which also brings me to my other favored view on The Valley ...
It's about growing trees.
In my eyes, Mount Stupid isn't about being dumb or not knowing things. No one really knows everything. We've covered that. We're always moving forward without a full understanding, only the information that we have at hand and what we know best about ourselves.
No, I think the defining characteristic of Mount Stupid is that climbing it is inherently an outcome focused path.
"I'm going to get to the peak of the tallest mountain."
Or
"I'm going to grow the tallest tree."
When you have this perspective, it narrows your field of view, it narrows your choices and your focus. Your susceptibility toward external understanding is at it's peak of exploitiveness because anyone who comes along with the promise of you being at that peak, of having the tallest tree, is going to get your attention.
But the truth of yourself, your life, and what you desire is NOT being at the peak.
Remember, life isn't about arriving. Unless you really are trying to attain enlightenment and your goal is ultimately to ascend your spiritual form from this mortal realm and leave your body behind (in which case if you CAN achieve that, you're gonna spend your entire life traveling the path to that point anyway) ...
Each "goal" you come to just reveals a new goal.
And if your entire life is defined by the goal, when you complete one goal and discover there's another, what happens to the reality you defined for yourself?
It evaporates into nothing.
Or you realize,
That life all along wasn't about being at the top of the tallest mountain or having the tallest tree,
It was about becoming better and better at walking the path, at climbing mountains in general, at growing trees in general.
It's about the path, not the destination.
It's about the choice, not the outcome.
When you realize that, the results of your actions become not about the outcome itself, but about what happens in the process of creating that outcome.
In other words, when you're in The Valley and moving forward step by step, if you can let go out the need for a specific outcome in those steps and instead recognizing that what those steps tell you is the realness you're actually looking to discover, then failure becomes less and less of a concern, you worry less and less about being right, you worry less and less about how good or valid you are.
Because you're on that path moving forward and every step you take is NOW making you successful in becoming better at that path of mastery and life.
(For those of you following along, I wrote this article following a conversation in The Arena from September7, which you can watch here:
Be Useful. Be Present. Love the Journey.
Joseph Robertson, CMO The Guardian Academy
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This is an excellent way to begin the weekend
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