When Success Feels Uncomfortable: Learning to Recognize the Calm Waters

By Stacy Fitzsimmons, MBA

We know when we're in the rapids.

The deadlines pile up. Something isn't working. The business changes. The funding disappears. The team is struggling. Life throws something new at us before we've figured out the last thing.

We brace ourselves. We problem-solve. We work harder. We adapt.

Sometimes we just hang on.

And after you've been doing that long enough, you get pretty damn good at it.

But I've been thinking lately about something we don't talk about nearly as much:

What happens when the water becomes calm?

What happens when the thing you've been working toward actually starts working?

When the business becomes more stable. When you're making enough money. When you have good clients. When the team finally gets it. When you aren't spending every day reacting to the next urgent problem.

You would think we'd settle in and enjoy it.

I'm not sure we always do.

Sometimes, calm makes us uncomfortable.

When everything is fine, something must be wrong

I was talking with someone recently who was questioning whether she should walk away from a business she'd spent years building and go back to a traditional job.

So we talked about what was actually happening.

She had clients.

She had income.

She enjoyed the work.

The business was stable.

In fact, as we talked, she realized it was more stable than it had ever been.

And yet she was considering walking away from it.

That's when I asked a question I haven't been able to stop thinking about since:

How real is the fear?

Fear is a motivator. Of course it is. We're wired that way.

But the presence of fear doesn't necessarily mean the presence of danger.

Sometimes there really is a bear coming through the woods.

Sometimes we're imagining the bear.

And sometimes, I think, we've simply spent so much time looking for bears that we don't quite know what to do when there aren't any.

That's something worth noticing.

We learn how to survive the rapids

For years, I've used the imagery of rapids when I talk about Growth & Balance.

Life isn't predictable. Neither are businesses, careers or organizations.

There are seasons when we have to brave the rapids. We make quick decisions. We stretch our capacity. We work longer hours than we'd like. We solve the problem immediately in front of us because that's what the moment requires.

The rapids can teach us a lot about ourselves.

We learn what we're capable of.

We learn which systems hold up under pressure and which ones don't.

We learn who shows up.

We learn what matters and what doesn't.

But eventually, hopefully, the water changes.

And I think we need to become as good at recognizing the calm waters as we are at recognizing the rapids.

Because calm waters have a purpose, too.

Recognize the calm

This sounds ridiculously simple.

It isn't.

When urgency has been your normal, the absence of urgency can feel like stagnation.

You start wondering what you should be doing.

What should I add?

What's the next opportunity?

Should I make a change?

Is everyone else getting ahead of me?

Maybe I should launch something.

Maybe I should get another credential.

Maybe I should find another client.

Maybe I should take another job.

Maybe I should blow up the perfectly functional thing I've built because...well, apparently we're not stressed enough.

Stop.

Look at the evidence.

Is something actually wrong?

Or have you reached a place you've been working toward and haven't allowed yourself to recognize it?

There is a difference between being stuck and being stable.

We need to learn to recognize it.

Restore what the rapids took from you

Calm isn't wasted time.

Sometimes the most productive thing we can do in calm waters is recover.

Take the vacation.

Spend the afternoon away from your computer.

Read something that has absolutely nothing to do with professional development.

Have dinner with your family without checking email.

Sleep.

Think.

Do whatever you stopped doing while you were trying to keep the boat upright.

We talk a lot about resilience as the ability to keep going.

I think we need to talk more about what happens after we've kept going.

If we never restore the capacity we used getting through the rapids, eventually there won't be much left when the next ones arrive.

And let's be honest.

There will be more rapids.

That's life.

The goal isn't to build a life where nothing difficult ever happens.

The goal is to stop treating every moment as though something difficult is happening.

Reinforce what is working

Calm waters give us something else we rarely have during a crisis:

Perspective.

When you're in the rapids, you're trying not to hit the rocks.

When you're out of them, you can finally look backward.

What got me here?

What worked?

What made me stronger?

What systems held?

What decisions mattered?

What relationships mattered?

What do I absolutely need to keep doing?

We're remarkably quick to study failure. We should be equally rigorous about studying success.

Otherwise, we're leaving some of our most useful lessons behind.

Don't just celebrate that something worked.

Understand why it worked.

Because you're going to want that knowledge the next time the water gets rough.

Then reach

This may be the part I like most.

Calm waters aren't the end of growth. They might actually create the best conditions for it.

When you're not using all of your capacity to respond to immediate problems, you finally have room to ask better questions.

What am I curious about?

What do I want to learn?

What have I wanted to try but haven't had the capacity to explore?

Where am I ready to stretch?

Not because someone on LinkedIn told me I'm supposed to scale.

Not because someone else's business, career or life makes mine feel insufficient.

Not because I'm afraid I'll somehow fall behind.

Because I have the capacity to choose intentionally what comes next.

That's a very different kind of growth.

It's not growth driven by frenzy.

It's growth driven by clarity.

You don't have to manufacture the next rapid

I think some of us have become so accomplished at navigating hard things that struggle starts to feel strangely comfortable.

We're good there.

We know what to do.

Solve the problem. Meet the deadline. Fix the thing. Keep moving.

Calm asks something different of us.

It asks us to stop long enough to notice where we are.

That's harder than it sounds.

So if things are going well right now, maybe your job isn't to immediately figure out what's wrong or chase whatever comes next.

Maybe your job is to recognize the calm.

Restore what the rapids took.

Reinforce what got you here.

And only then decide where you want to reach next.

There will always be more rapids.

When you're fortunate enough to find yourself in calm waters, don't create waves just because you've forgotten what stillness feels like.

Use them.

Enjoy them.

And grow from there.

Calm Waters is an emerging concept within my Growth & Balance body of work, which explores how we navigate growth, capacity, change and the different seasons of our personal and professional lives.