It always gets worse first.

I was recently at a mastermind where someone made this point, and as hard as I tried,

I couldn't really poke holes in it. For the simple fact that everything new requires some

vulnerability, some discomfort that was previously non-existent.

Or in other words, you have to endure turbulence prior to calm.

So imagine a wavy line on a piece of paper or whiteboard

where the top of each wave is slightly bigger than the one before it.

Right? So right before that new wave occurs, there is necessarily a low point or a trough.

A point that's absolutely, without a doubt, lower than the top of the previous wave.

And this, to me, summarizes the battle we fight, right?

When you're comfortable, when you're at the top of the little wave you're currently riding,

it almost feels self-defeating to willingly jump off and land yourself at the bottom of some new, soon-to-be future

wave. Every new mountain means starting at the bottom, a new base. Every acquisition

means letting go of something we once knew and understood.

The question is, are you willing to fight through?

Are you willing to hang out in the trough at the bottom, right, wander that valley of despair?

And that's, by the way, what we're talking about when we talk about, for example, Walt Disney

being fired, being called unimaginative and struggling to get the world to understand his

Mickey Mouse cartoon.

That's what we're talking about with Steve and Was with Apple. That's what we're talking about with Lincoln and the constant political

rejection before finding stability and success. These stories have become almost folklore.

And all of them share the same characteristic, that the main players willingly accepted the fact that it would get worse before it got better.

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