“It’s not the destination, it’s the journey” is a quote famously attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson the American philosopher.

Enjoying the journey, ‘the getting there’, is every bit as important to me as arriving at the destination. There is joy and learning to be taken from every possible moment we live our lives, whether that is inside or outside of work.

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You may wonder why I am sharing this today of all days?

There was this recent news of a founder where he recently shared a cautionary tale about the dangers of unhealthy lifestyle choices linked to the hustle culture.

Have you scrolled through LinkedIn recently?

Nowadays, It’s like every founder is swimming in an ocean of perpetual wins, a parade of perfection and if anyone ever loses, it’s transformed into a heroic “I was living in a box 2 years ago. Now I’m a CEO.” kind of comeback story.

That’s how skilled we are at positioning ourselves – not reporting the bad stuff until we have some shiny news to wrap it in. Startups are like the modern world’s Wild West – where the narrative is always “Another day, another dollar (or a few million)”.

Because who needs honesty when you can just slap a "living in a box" backstory on your latest funding announcement? We're masters of spin, turning sleepless nights into "hustle culture" and coding nightmares into "growth hacking."

Let's be real, folks. The startup world is more like a low-budget horror film, with a generous dose of digital filters to mask the reality. Behind the shiny facade of social media, we're battling existential dread, coding snafus, and the ever-present fear of running out of ramen (I like fried rice tho). One minute we're dreaming of Forbes covers, the next we're drowning in a sea of spreadsheets and faulty demos and wondering if we've made a terrible mistake.

The thing is, social media is a selectively filtered snapshot of the startup world. Behind every glowing update is the shadow of sleepless nights, the weight of unsaid worries, and and the agonizing wait for things to “just work out”.

But hey, at least we're good at making it look like we're having a blast. Because who wants to admit that the startup life is a rollercoaster ride of highs and lows, where the lows can be pretty darn low?

Stress and Ambition

Stress is the silent partner in every startup. It’s that clingy, unwelcome guest. And while you may assume your peer founders are just stress-resistant superhumans – nope, they’re just as lost, confused and close to their wits’ end as you are. They’ve just perfected the art of the poker (entrepreneurial) face. We all have.

But can somebody tell me – why do we all act like our cortisol levels are a figment of imagination? Newsflash: They're not. And acknowledging that stress is a universal experience isn't a sign of weakness. It's a sign of being, well, human.

But we founders don’t like that. We operate in two modes: god complex (soaring high on vision) and existential crisis (getting slapped down by reality). We are delusional and have a damn hard time reconciling our limitations with our ambitions.

Ambition, like most things potent, can be a double-edged sword. On one hand, it fuels our drive, gets us out of bed, and spurs us during those godforsaken fundraising rounds. On the other? It can rob us of our sleep, our peace, and on tragic occasions, our lives.

We founder’s are always performing on the Mantra of “Don’t tell me why it can’t be done, tell me about how we can make this possible”. But what happens is that we are always letting our Ambitions talk, unrealistic product deadlines, targets and what not, and in this process the biggest gamble happens with our highly fragile sanity.

I think most of us founders flirt with the line between our burning ambitions and fragile sanity. And too often, we’re convinced that to achieve the former, we must sacrifice the latter. But Ambition without sanity is like a car without brakes: it might get you to your destination - quickly, but the journey could be disastrous.

The Balance Framework

If only we applied the same thinking to our mental lives as we do to growing our startups. Some people have, like Andy Johns (growth legend via Facebook, Twitter, Wealthfront, and Quora) who left his high-performance career behind a few years ago after coming dangerously close to heart attack.

Let’s call it a Balance Framework, the three-fold framework for not losing your mind in the manic world of startups.

Define Your Range of Tolerance

First, we need to define our range of tolerance.

Just as you wouldn’t find a polar bear sunbathing in the Sahara, every living organism, including us, has its sweet spot—an optimal environment to not just survive, but thrive. This sweet spot, our 'Range of Tolerance,' is a delicate balance.

Taking on too much pushes us into zones of intolerance, where very little life can be sustained. Our body will start signaling, but it takes a special kind of listening to first hear and then heed the signals. As Andy says:

“There are day-to-day stresses that are normal and we just have to put up with, but then there's the other stuff that's the flashing red alarm.

So the same is true with people. If your sleep always sucks, if your relationships are constantly strained or frequently strained, if you’re ending your days with a bottle of wine, if your physical health is failing, constantly battling shallow breaths, tightness in your chest, those huge bags under your eyes, there's so many ways that that can be measured so there's really no excuse for that to say, "Oh, I just didn't know," I'd say it's to look at those things. When those are suffering or when they're really out of whack, it's undeniable that there is something that is detrimental to your wellbeing that's going on right now, and your body is telling you, "Stop. Something needs to change."

Challenge Toxic Beliefs

Second, we need to challenge toxic beliefs.

We've all got beliefs. Some push us forward, and some, well, they tie weights to our ankles. The startup world, especially in tech, is rife with these dangerous beliefs. Thoughts like "Other founders manage stress better than me," or "This overwhelming feeling? It’s the founder tax," or “I wish this feeling would just go away but I don’t think it ever will” are just some of the myths floating around.

Is Startup the Right Progression of Your Life?

And third, you need to ask yourself – is this the right progression of my life?

Startup life isn’t for everyone and that's okay. It's not an elite club. It's a lifestyle. There’s this romantic vision of founding a startup that doesn’t hold up under close scrutiny.

Sure, there are a few select cases where startup makes sense. But they are so rare, and it’s so easy to fool yourself into thinking a bad opportunity is a good one, that it’s really worth slapping yourself once or twice making a decision.

Screw that up and you’ll find yourself in a state of the slow and steady accumulation of the pressure, the stresses, the anxieties, near-constant panic, the emotional ups and downs that came with being a founder, and frankly an addiction to achievement as a way to feel good and to feel whole. Also, maybe (definitely) a few swears here and there too.

“People in these high-stress environments often find themselves facing alarming health issues before they hit 40. You're likely to end up in the ER before you make your first million. Still, stress, in tiny doses, can actually be your pal. Think of it as weight training for your brain. A little challenge here, a hiccup there, and suddenly you're mentally buff. But moderation is key. This ain’t about enduring more and more until you snap. It's about gradually, smartly, extending your capacities. What's an empire worth if you're too burned out to enjoy it?”

There’s heroism in hustling, sure. But when we start to believe that we're invincible or compare our tolerance with others, we walk an unsustainable tightrope.

You wouldn’t push a car running on fumes, so why do it to yourself? Brakes exist for a reason, they’re for “slowing yourself down, get that break, cool yourself down”

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