The untold secret about post success blues.

Have you ever achieved a goal and it didn’t feel as good as you thought it would?

Recently I was speaking with a truly fabulous female entrepreneur who described the moment when she realised her business had FINALLY hit six figures in revenue. And she felt…..

completely deflated.

She sat there and wondered what to do? This was what she had been working SO hard towards. She thought she should feel over the moon, but she didn’t.

And then she thought.

What now?

Maybe you’re thinking that this is someone who isn’t used to celebrating success, maybe she was having a bad day and should have been more excited. But I want to share that post success blues is real and quite often it’s a the top performer, a talented person, or one of the highest achievers who suffer from post success blues the most.

The downside of treating a goal as the end instead of a new beginning.

In elite sports, many athletes have their goal as being the best in the world or winning a gold medal. But more than one Olympic Gold Medal winner has spoken about feeling alone and empty, while despondently standing on the podium as their national anthem triumphantly blared across the packed stadium. Other medal-winning Olympians have spoken about returning to the Olympic Village after the medal ceremony, unable to stop crying sad, rather than happy tears.

Many medallists from different Olympics have detailed their battles with depression even though they all thought they would feel happy and successful after achieving a medal in their event. Swimming legend Michael Phelps spoke out describing his own battle with depression and suicidal thoughts, calling on the U.S. Olympic committee to help athletes with depression. Michael has said that he believes that 90% of athletes go through a post-Olympic depression.

And it’s not only the Olympics, athletes in every sport, in every country around the World, have spoken out about mental health issues. It’s easy to dismiss this desolate feeling of ennui as an obvious side-effect of a high-pressure career with extreme physical demands but I want to share how it goes deeper than that.

What is success, really?

In my coaching work, I often unpack or help clients ‘unlearn’ what they think ‘success’ is. Often, the idea is that when ‘success’ arrives every part of your life will fall magically into a perfect place. Money, work, home life, health, family are all aligned in magical harmony with every issue and problem miraculously resolved.

Is that really success? No, it’s a fairy tale. I have never ever seen, experienced or read any credible report of this kind of success when every aspect of your life becomes perfect after a ‘something’ has been achieved.

Why achieving a goal is only a step, not the end…

To avoid post success blues, it is vital to think about a goal as a step towards your life’s aim or purpose. If you think of a goal as the end of your life’s journey, it’s easy to feel deflated because you haven’t imagined how your life will continue after you achieve the goal. So it really helps if you think of a goal as just a step towards the rich and happy life you want to enjoy

I have found this small change in meaning has a massive impact on entrepreneurs’ when they get stuck in their pre-success phase. I haven’t yet met a successful entrepreneur who hasn’t had to pivot in a new direction halfway through a project, sometimes even walking away from their original business concepts. It’s a lot easier to change direction when you think that you’re exchanging one step for another, rather than you haven’t made it to your goal.

How can Feeling Forwards stop the post success blues?

If you would love to avoid the post success blues, what should you do?

Enter, Feeling Forwards. Whether you want to create a brighter future, you’re an aspiring Olympian or a driven entrepreneur or an adventurer wanting to create a new life, the answer is the same. Instead of feeling as though you are the person working towards the success you want, Feeling Forwards is a guide to help you feel as though you have become the person who already has that success and is moving further forwards.

For example, instead of dreaming about winning a gold medal, you’re using Feeling Forwards to design your life as living as the person who has already won the gold medal.

Let’s go back to our fabulous female entrepreneur at the beginning of this article. What could have made the difference, so she felt elated rather than deflated when her goal of a 6-figure revenue came true!

If she had used Feeling Forwards, she would already have thought about what it would feel to achieve the six figures, how she would have celebrated and what the next stage be and how excited she would be to get started again. Using Feeling Forwards in this way, you can avoid what I call the ‘now what’ syndrome when you feel lost because what you’ve been working towards so hard and dreaming about has actually arrived.

Instead of using up all of your thinking and dreaming about achieving that one goal, using Feeling Forwards to create a life beyond that goal greatly reduces the possibility of post success blues.

There’s so much more to share in my book ‘Feeling Forwards’!