Mike Brown describes the emotional crash entrepreneurs face after a major exit, when constant busyness suddenly stops. He argues that sitting in stillness, rather than rushing to the next thing, lets you surface what you actually want instead of chasing external validation.
So one of the things I do now is I help fellow entrepreneurs with that post-exit transition. It's actually a real problem because when you have these peak experiences and you've been working so hard, so solely focused on something for so long, there is something that we are trying to feel or achieve, and then all of a sudden it's over. It leaves this massive vacuum in your life and you've got to figure out what to fill it up with. And it's like, okay, what next? And this could be true of any, any kind of transition from jobs, from like a divorce, right? I've actually built a playbook for what I wish that I had done. So the first part of that playbook is actually just sitting in stillness. We are told our whole lives to be busy, right? If I wake up in the morning and I just start grinding, what that allows me to do is not feel any of those things. And so we, we cover up the things we don't want to feel with busyness or achievement or external validation. And then all of a sudden that goes away and you go, oh man, I'm still left with myself. So the first recommendation is, is sitting in stillness.
