(You will never see this coming)

I'll be chilling when I hit $10k a month.

Hits it.

I'll be chilling when I hit $30k a month.

Hits it.

I'll be chilling when I hit $75k a month.

Hits it.

I'll be chilling when I hit $250k a month.

Hits it.

Never chills.

You know this pattern because you have lived it or you are about to.

The milestone that was supposed to buy peace arrives and, within a couple of weeks, the goalpost has moved somewhere further out.

There is always a next number, and the next number is always the one that will finally do it.

Alan Watts wrote about this decades ago and called it the backwards law. His observation was that the more directly you pursue happiness, contentment, or peace, the more they slip out of reach. The pursuit itself is the thing keeping them away. The mind that is worried over the next milestone cannot occupy the current one, no matter how good the current one is.

Self-esteem is a fraction where your success is divided by your expectations. Founders chase bigger revenue, bigger wins, bigger status, assuming the fraction will eventually equal peace.

But the denominator moves with them where every new win expands the expectation of the next win.

The version of you that hit $10k a month would have paid anything to be where you are now. Do not spend the whole climb waiting for a peace that arrives after the climb ends because the climb doesn't end.

It just becomes a bigger climb.

The chilling isn't at $250k. It isn't at a million a month. It isn't at the exit.

It's on the Sunday morning when you notice, for a moment, that things are pretty good before your brain finds the next thing to worry about.

Enjoy the journey.

– Wiz

P.S. If you want to talk about how we help founders build the infrastructure underneath their personal brand so the work gets lighter, book a call and let’s go over it together.