Transcriber: Vivian Lim Reviewer: David DeRuwe
Have you ever accomplished something you weren’t quite sure you could do?
It’s energizing, it’s exciting, it’s amazing.
Success feels kind of wonderful, right?
The work you did opened more doors than you ever thought possible.
And yet that work also teased the opportunity of even more doors
that you’d never thought possible.
And maybe, just maybe,
as you peeked through the doors at what could be,
you thought to yourself, “I think I want more.”
Instead of success handing you happiness,
it gave you a faster pace, an increased hunger, bigger goals.
And in that faster pace, increased hunger and bigger goals, you also found
uncertainty, self-doubt, anxiety,
and stress.
Success is wonderful,
but it’s also kind of hell.
It just might be that success is kind of a Wonderhell.
(Laughter)
Over the course of a 20-year career in executive search,
I was hired by my clients to go out and find for them,
and recruit away on their behalf,
some of the most successful people in the world.
Now, that sounds like a hard job,
except I was helped by the fact that despite all this success,
which is why I was calling them,
they weren’t all that happy,
which is why they were calling me back.
Now, we think once we’ve achieved success, everything gets easier.
So why doesn’t it ever get easier?
Why doesn’t it feel better?
Why doesn’t success equal happiness, and why does it all too often
feel like Wonderhell?
I had my own Wonderhell moment shortly after my last book came out.
I'd spent the previous few weeks existing on airplanes.
I had gone to sleep in 20 different hotel beds.
I had woken up in 10 different time zones.
At the moment of this realization, I was 35,000 feet in the air;
I had 1,200 miles behind me and 1,200 more to go.
The only thing I knew for certain was that somewhere between the blur
that would be the past
and the blur that would be the future was the space I was in at present.
And the space I was in at present
was upright and locked in a center seat on a red-eye,
and I was completely and utterly fried.
Now, launching my book well meant I had to be bold.
I had no idea what I was doing, but I set these crazy goals for myself anyway.
I let my mouth write a whole lot of checks that my hustle had to cash.
I’d spent those weeks existing on nothing but coffee and protein bars
and the rush of adrenaline, that bowel-shaking terror,
offered by the fistful.
But it worked.
This thing that I created, I grew, I birthed,
I pursued so very hard for those weeks, and months, and years leading up to it.
It worked.
I was pushing towards success and my mentor GPS announced,
“You’ve arrived.”
And I was like, “I know, right?”
(Laughter)
But I was also pushing towards burnout.
I was tired, so very tired,
and somewhere in the alchemy of achievement and exhaustion,
the part of my brain that normally governs my humility disappeared,
and all I was left with was a tiny little voice whispering,
“This thing has legs.”
This thing has legs.
Now you might recognize this moment as the moment that the burden of potential
walks into your psyche, unpacks its backpack and asks,
“Hey, whatcha got for me, huh?”
The burden of your potential plunks its weight on your shoulders
and demands that you carry it around with you at all times.
It’s your Wonderhell.
And it starts the moment that you realize that your idea has promise,
that it can be bigger, that you were meant for more.
Ego has entered the chat.
(Laughter)
Now what comes next is a sea of turbulent emotions -
these “necessary” evils that we’ve been told
are just part of going after everything we’ve ever wanted.
And we think we need to just struggle through and get by all the time,
wrestling with this never-ending, flip-flopping dialogue:
“I can handle this. I can’t handle this.”
We think of success as a final destination, but it’s not.
We think once we’ve achieved it, we’ve arrived, but we haven’t.
We think once there it’s easy money, smooth sailing, but it’s not.
Because Wonderhell teaches us
that success is not a final destination at all,
but merely an inflection point along the way.
So once I realized I wasn’t at the end of my journey, merely in the middle,
I set about to do some homework.
I read all the books.
I read the books telling me to crush it, to lean in, to 10x.
(Laughter)
And I read their polar opposites,
the ones telling me to stop apologizing and wash my face.
(Laughter)
And what was on offer on social media was not much better.
There were the slicked-back bros, the hustle porn dudes
jetting off to ink their next deal, yeah.
And then there were the boho chic instafluencers
telling me to follow my passion,
telling me I’d find happiness
if only I’d breathe into the right energy crystals.
(Laughter)
What even is an energy crystal, anyway?
Neither worked for me.
I'm guessing neither of these work for you either.
They didn’t work for thousands of leaders I stewarded
through massive moments of career and life shift
during those 20 years in executive search.
And they certainly didn’t work for nearly 100 glass-ceiling shatterers,
Olympic medalists, start-up unicorns,
and everyday people like me and like you,
who I sought out to interview to find a way out of Wonderhell.
Each one of them told me how they did things they never thought possible.
And each one of them also told me that, at every phase and at every stage,
they experienced crushing imposter syndrome,
doubt, vulnerability, uncertainty, envy, exhaustion, and burnout.
But each one of them made it to the other side and the better for it.
So, how did they do it?
Three ways:
First, they came to terms with their ambition.
Do you know why internal candidates always leave if they don’t get the job?
It’s because the very process of interviewing for that bigger job
means that they literally had to, even just for a moment,
answer questions in that role, speak in the voice of that role,
wear the clothes of that role,
and once they saw part of themselves in this new way,
they couldn't unsee themselves in this new way.
And just like these internal candidates, you can’t unsee this new you either.
Each time we envision success, even before we achieve it,
we see a version of ourselves we never thought real,
a potential we never thought possible,
a promise of everything we can be and all that we can embody.
There is the you before this realization,
and then there is the you after.
Second, the mixed emotions surrounding this realization -
the good, the bad, and the ugly -
aren’t limitations but invitations.
For each of the people I spoke to who had a track record of thriving in Wonderhell,
they understood that these uncomfortable feelings weren’t just part of the process.
They were actually incredibly helpful allies.
So, they’re able to stop, reflect on these emotions,
listen to these emotions,
renegotiate the relationship with these emotions,
because we think about these chaotic reactions as slings and arrows
to be absorbed in silence and pushed down and muscled through,
but that’s a lie.
And that lie is stopping us from capitalizing on our Wonderhell,
because Wonderhell is the excitement and the fear.
It’s the joy and the uncertainty.
It's the possibility and the chaos.
And it is the promise and the potential that you feel when you see this new you,
and you realize the only one who gets to choose which you to become is, well,
you.
And that means changing the voice inside your head, warning,
“You haven’t done this before!”
and warning you to run away from your potential into a cheerleader,
yelling, “You haven’t done this before!”
and encouraging you to run towards it.
Wonderhell is the sign that you were on the right track
to new opportunity and new growth.
And third, Wonderhell loves itself a repeat visitor.
We think things will settle down after, it’ll get easier.
All we need to do is get through this one stomach-churning, butt-clenching,
fight-or-flight moment, as if it was a single,
one-time temporary hurdle.
But for everyone I spoke to,
what was on the other side of this Wonderhell
was the next one, and the next one,
and if they were lucky, the next one after that.
Our journeys are a series of successes
punctuated by lessons and losses in life.
It’s an ongoing cycle.
There isn’t one big finish line. There are a million different little ones.
So listen, I’m not telling you to suck it up
and I’m not telling you to get hard.
What I am telling you is that to define success as a finite destination
would mean that you’re accepting that there’s only a finite limit
to your growth.
And all that does is steal away all the wonder
and leave us only in the hell.
So what if we redefined success not as an endpoint,
but as a waypoint, and allowed ourselves to sit in that deep discomfort
that is the only path to growth?
What if we saw success not as a final destination,
but as a portal,
one that expanded our understanding of what is possible?
What if we stopped dreading Wonderhell and racing to survive it?
And instead learn to look forward to it, to plan for it, to learn from it,
to grow from it, and thrive in it instead.
What if Wonderhell wasn’t our breakdown,
but our breakthrough?
Because Wonderhell invites us to dive into that discomfort.
Wonderhell compels us to expand our boundaries.
Wonderhell urges us to embrace our newfound potential.
So what will you do with the gift that is the burden of your potential?
What will you do next time you find yourself in Wonderhell?
Thank you.
(Applause)