An Overview:
When we’re looking at self-improvement gurus online, we often see them at the peak of their powers without seeing the struggles that they may have faced along the way. Today I’m going to be sharing with you a very interesting concept of self development, which is the valley of hell before success, the challenge from loneliness. I believe this is a very important challenge that we all must have when we’re trying to develop ourselves and get to the next level, so I would like to share this with you!
For the full analysis of this video, go check it out on our YouTube video:
The Success Graph:
As you can see from this diagram, the success graph is exponential and not linear. The reason for why this is the case is precisely because for the most time when you’re trying to reach the next level, you are making mistakes, you might not know how to make money, you might not know how to market, you might not know how to read well, you might not know how to take notes. As a result, you’re going to be stuck at a small level for a long time. But as long as you learn from those mistakes, your knowledge is going to increase, and since your knowledge is going up, the mistakes you’re going to make are going to decrease. As your experience compounds your success would grow as well and you will suddenly see yourself developing at a very quick rate.
The Social Graph:
The friendship graph looks like a U, or a valley, and this is what we are going to be focusing on in this post. It’s gonna slowly decrease until it hits a low hit rate. And then only when you reach the next level (what one may consider success) it is going to shoot up again. The reason for why the friendship graph is like this is because when you’re first trying to take yourself to the next level, your friends around you may try to support you in your actions. However, as time goes on, you start doing the right things, and then stop doing what your friends are doing in order to improve. By doing this, like skipping the clubs, skipping the alcohol, this may put a gap between you and your current group of friends, driving you apart. As a result, over time, your friends start leaving you and your number of friends decrease. At this time, you would find yourself in a situation with low success and low number of friends. Now note as well, it is only when you reach the next level that your number of friends increase. This is because you have reached the next level and find similarities with the other people in that next level as well. Therefore, your social group will likewise increase.
The Valley of Hell:
So why do I call this the valley of hell?
It is the valley of hell because you are struggling from both sides. At that point at the bottom of the graph, you see that both the success graph and the social graph are both very low. You are low in confidence because you aren’t succeeding, what you are pouring out your heart to do is not working. Likewise, you are low in connections because most of your friends have left.
Naturally, this would feel like hell.
Conclusion:
We all have to go through the valley of hell whenever we try to improve ourselves and reach new heights. The most important thing is that we have to have patience, recognise that this is real and expectable, AND KEEP FIGHTING.
I went through this during high school in a very real and difficulty period of my time, everything seemed to be collapsing around me and I was really struggling to see the light side at the end of the tunnel. But I kept going on, I kept fighting, and here I am today.
I will write more about how to overcome this valley of hell later on, but for now, go check out my YouTube video for a deep dive into this challenge.