your story is your ceiling

read time: 8 minutes

don’t feel like reading? listen to the podcast version here​

Have ya ever thought about the fact that there are only so many ways to be happy, but a near infinite number of ways to be unhappy?

Tolstoy probably said it best:

Think about it…

Let’s say you’re happy when you’re pain free, but unhappy when you experience pain.

That means there is only one state in which you are happy (you feel no pain), but A LOT of ways you can be unhappy (you feel pain).

That could be pain from fire ants crawling up your leg…

Or a bad back you threw out picking up your 12 pound cat…

Or a burned patch of skin on the roof of your mouth from shoveling liquid lava pizza into your face instead of letting it cool down…

There are literally millions of ways to be in pain… but only one state in which you experience no pain.

The deck is stacked against us, my friends.

Here’s what this means for us entrepreneurs:

Success is often a narrowly defined tightrope we’re precariously balanced atop.

Whereas Failure is a 7-lane super-highway with traffic flowing in both directions.

I’m thinking about this today because last week a big influencer slipped into my DMs with a problem…

Despite having a massive social media following (~1M), his business was in dire straits and barely making any money.

(this is unfortunately so common it’s practically a cliche)

Truth is, a lot of the people that look successful on social media are often stuck somewhere on the 7-lane Highway of Failure.

So I hopped on a Constraint Diagnostic call with our influencer-friend and ran him through the Scale Matrix to figure out if he had a Story, Strategy, Systems, or Skills issue.

Now, here’s the interesting thing about our struggling-influencer:

About 12 months ago he had a record breaking ~$250k month…

But shortly thereafter he started self-sabotaging.

He started doubting himself.
Stopped showing up.
Stopped doing the work that had produced such killer results.

And slowly, but surely, the business started falling apart until in this most recent month he barely cleared $10k.

Oof… talk about a brutal fall from the heavens.

When a business collapses in such dramatic fashion it’s almost never a Strategy, Systems, or Skills issue…

It’s a Story problem.

Stories are the collection of beliefs and perspectives you have about the world, your place in it, and your ability to make an impact on the universe.

In a very real way, your story is your ceiling.

It is the container in which you and your business have to grow.

We’re a lot like a plant in this way… we only ever grow to fill the size of the pot we’ve been given.

But if you transplant that plant into a bigger pot, voila… just like magic, it starts to grow again.

Stories are simultaneously the most powerful tool you have for transforming reality in an instant…

But they’re also extraordinarily tricky.

Tricky because they are literally the lens sitting on your eye through which you see the world…

And because you’re so close to them, you never stop to question their existence.

So me and this influencer spent the better part of an hour unpacking the Stories he’d been telling himself.

And he left that call with nothing more than a couple reframes and a new awareness of the problem…

Doesn’t sound like much, but only a couple days later he sent me the message below:

The funny thing about Story constraints is that they are both the BIGGEST roadblock keeping you from your goals….

But also, they’re technically the quickest to overcome ‘cause all ya got to do is become aware of ‘em and then set the intention to rewrite them whenever they crop up.

To help you with the awareness piece, here are 7 of the Stories our influencer friend had to rewrite to change the trajectory of his business (and life):

1. I’m only as good as my last performance and I need to continually prove myself.

Here’s the thing to recognize about this story…

You’ll never prove yourself once and for all.

Success often feels like nothing more than a relief, whereas failure feels existential. Like it’s calling your very identity into question.

So what ends up happening?

High achievers just keep moving the goalpost.

The new high score becomes the baseline expectation moving forward.

Welcome to the Hedonic Treadmill.

Unfortunately, you can’t really get off the Hedonic Treadmill.

That’s just one of the quirks of being human.

But what you can do is change what you have it pointing towards.

​Read this next if you’re struggling with this particular story.​

2. I can’t help people with something I myself struggle with.

I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather take fitness advice from a coach who is struggling through all the same problems as me rather than the young buck with the genetics of a Greek god.

3. I got lucky.

Of course you did…

We all did.

The fact that you’re breathing air, have access to the internet, and are reading this right now indicates you’re one of the luckiest humans to ever live.

But here’s the most important thing about luck:

Luck is when Preparation meets Opportunity.

The vast majority of people miss out on luck not for a lack of Opportunity, but for a lack of Preparation.

​Watch this next if you want to maximize your surface area of luck in life.​

4. I’m an impostor and this slump just proves it.

If you don’t ever feel like an impostor, it’s probably because you’ve stopped growing…

Stopped reaching for goals beyond your current capacity.

Stopped stepping into rooms with people operating beyond your level.

If you don’t ever want to feel like an impostor, then just stop striving.

But if the cure for impostor syndrome sounds worse than the disease…

Then just accept that it’s the price you must pay to do things you’ve never done before…

And just keep going.

5. This won’t last.

So? Nothing does.

And that’s okay.

6. What I’m doing doesn’t actually matter.

One of your greatest gifts as a human is the ability to decide what things mean.

You are quite literally a Meaning Maker.

And with that, you have the ability to decide why what you do matters.

Often, because we’re so close to our gifts and the impact they can have on the world, we lose sight of what makes us so special in the first place.

I felt this same way when I started my first business (window washing).

I thought, this couldn’t matter less.

Until one day after driving along a bug infested strip of highway in the dead of summer, my windshield was so filthy with splattered insects I could barely see anything…

So I pulled over and gave it a good squeegeeing.

When I hopped back behind the wheel, it was like the proverbial scales had fallen from Paul’s eyes.

And I remember thinking in that moment, wow… the world is so much more beautiful now.

Well, it’s the same when washing the windows to somebody’s home.

They might only subconsciously register how the dirty windows are bumming them out…

But I promise, once those windows are clean and they have a perfectly invisible sheet of glass standing between them and the wonderful world beyond, it lifts their moods.

And that’s what we focused on…

Not on cleaning dirty windows…

But on giving people an incredible view that brightens their day.

7. I’ll be happy when I…

We entrepreneurs are masters of delayed gratification.

This is both a superpower and a super-weakness.

Because gratification delayed long enough is eventually lost entirely.

So here’s the reframe…

Delayed gratifcation is unnecessary when you find gratification IN the delay.

One final thought to chew on this week:

All the Stories you tell yourself are simply an interpretation…

An attempt to explain why things are the way they are.

And the funny thing is, it doesn’t even matter if these Stories are true.

In fact, most of the Stories you’re currently telling yourself are most definitely NOT true.

But it doesn’t matter.

Your brain doesn’t care.

It accepts whatever you tell it.

So just remember:

You can either be the Hero of your story or the Victim…

But you can’t be both.

So choose wisely.

And I’ll see ya next week.

Stay Hyperfocused, My Friend.
Anthony “Loves A Good Story” Vicino

P.S. If you’ve got a business that’s struggling to grow and you think it might be a Story problem, hit reply and tell me about it. Let’s get ya unstuck.