#49 — Why suffering is succeeding

Here’s the thing. There are hundreds of posts on which you can read how hard is to be a founder. I read a bunch of them each week myself; but the real point is that you have no idea until you go through it the first time. It’s kind of like watching porn and making love. Yeah, that different... but not nearly as pleasant. You can exercise, sure, but still it’s not the same things. So: here’s how it feels like, so that you can know a little more in advance and be prepared.

Be prepared to lose all your friends, to not being able to hug your wife and children for months, to talk to your mother only via email. Be prepared to spend all your money, to accept that you’re failing, to stand in the shower defeated. Be prepared to feel that there’s no hope for all the time and energy you put, they vanished like snow in the sun. Be prepared to sit alone in the dark at night, crushed but still unable to sleep. You get the picture. Maybe won’t happen, but more often it will.

I’ve been there and it’s not nice, also on this you can find a lot of very famous posts. But here’s the catch, the part that I don’t see written that much. You’ll find out that the days in which you suffer most, are the ones in which you learn most. The bigger the pain, the bigger the change. You’ll understand that the more you’re crushed and defeated and beaten, the more you’ll be surprised how much focused and energetic and resilient you are. No pressure, no diamonds; right?

At some point you’ll find yourself bored and unproductive if you’re not under a certain degree of pressure, and you’ll start looking for what makes you feel crushed and defeated and beaten. You’ll search for ways to challenge yourself ,and you’ll discover that by doing so you’ll have became something stronger, faster, smarter. A better version of you. Here’s another catch: to get to the “better you” and continue growing, you *need* to go through that crushing process, there is no shortcut.

I won’t lie to you: it *is* painful, there’s no avoiding that, and the further problem is that you have no idea of what the “better you” will look like. Will he/she love the same woman/man? Will he/she be a nicer or a meaner person? No way to know except going there, with the faith that every piece of the puzzle is falling in the place it was meant to be. It’s a big point to admit that you’re not really in control of a lot of things, but it *does* become a fun ride when you learn to enjoy it.

I should know: I’ve been a sport physiotherapist, turned radio speaker, turned tech founder, turned… well, working on that ;) But if I look back on each of these things there is a constant: they are all very difficult things that I did again and again until I stopped being shitty and became good instead, then great, then awesome. Then I moved on, to be able to challenge myself more and continue growing. Another thing as well that is indeed a common trend so far: impact.

Armando 1.0 made an impact on around 3,000 people a year for 10 years, Armando 2.0 made an impact on around 10,000-15,000 people a day for 5 years, Armando 3.0 touched at this point around 250,000 people in 2 years and a half… really can’t wait to see what Armando 4.0 will be able to do. I’ve been prototyping my next “iteration of me” in these very days; I’ll let you know the outcome, so far has been a great fun.