Stuckcess: Don’t Let the Good Stuff Get In Your Way.

When you win, you just never know if, when, and how you’ll ever do it again. So it’s tempting to sit and stare lovingly at your victories, to spend your days polishing your trophies, to read and repeatedly reread your rave reviews, and never get started on your next, big challenge. I call this Stuckcess.

The Trappings of Stuckcess

Stuckcess is the odd phenomenon of being trapped by your own best work. You know better than anyone how much bad work you had to produce in order to create that one good thing that everyone’s congratulating you for. Basking in the glow of your latest masterpiece feels so much more inviting than grinding it out again.

Besides, you’re now afraid that people will expect you to churn out good things on a continual basis without much effort. You might even come to expect it yourself, because it’s easy to forget how it happened, how you managed to produce something you’re so proud of and others are so pleased with. If this is the case, allow me to remind you.

Remember How You Won – by Losing

You succeeded by failing. It was your willingness to do something bad that enabled you to do something so good, and it will, if you let it, enable you to do it again.

In a previous post, I noted that all great artists have awkward beginnings. In this one, I’d like to point out that they also have awkward middles and ends.

Awkward All the Time

You know the greats by their greatest works. You never see the bad stuff that comes before, and, more importantly, in between, so you’re tempted to view progress as a steady climb upward, always rising, never falling.

You never get to see your favorite author’s waste basket overflowing with wads of discarded prose. You seldom get to hear the songs your favorite band recorded but never released. You never see the footage your favorite director dropped on the cutting room floor.

You only see their good stuff, but the bad stuff’s there, and it’s been there all along and throughout their careers.

Repeat Defeat

It isn’t the willingness to fail until one succeeds that makes a great artist, the kind of artist who produces an entire body of great work rather than just one piece of it. It’s the willingness to repeatedly fail before one succeeds, after one succeeds, and in between one’s successes.

The thing all masters know about masterpieces is that they’re not an everyday occurrence. DaVinci didn’t slap a Mona Lisa on a canvas every day of his life.

Graphing Gaffes and Glory

Plotted out over a lifetime of work, successes are the the random peaks and spikes that fall between the dips and flatlines. It would be a shame if you allowed yourself only one peak and lived the rest of your life clinging to it.

Don’t let the good stuff get in your way. Celebrate your success and move on. You’ve got some bad work to do.

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