some of us even start to research the how-to options. We might identify the various steps, and plan the final exit in great detail.
Tim Ferriss, investor, podcaster, and author of the best-selling book The 4-Hour Workweek, writes about how he had gotten past the “deciding mode” and into “full-on planning mode.” “The world was better off without a loser,” he had concluded.
In his planning mode, Tim Ferriss went to Princeton's Firestone Library. As one of the promising titles on this dark topic of suicide was checked out, Tim put a reserve request for the book. Back in those days, well before the Web, Kindle, and email, the only way to reserve a book was to put your name on a paper log. Once the book was available, the library would then mail you a postcard. Come get this book you were waiting for. We will hold it for two weeks. The postcard, with the promising title of suicide, landed in his mom's hands. Sure, Mom might be wondering about this fantastical development in her son's reading habits.
“Oo – and thank f**king God,” writes Tim. His worried mom called Tim to ask about this book and he blurted out a fast lie – a friend wanted this book for research on depression. Tim had specced out as many as six exit pathways, but that one call from his mom flipped a switch in his head. “I snapped out of my delusion by this one-in-a-million accident,” he writes. A library's postcard may have saved Tim's life.
Entrepreneur Ben Huh writes of his days of despondency. “I spent a week in my room with the lights off and cut off from the world, thinking of the best way to exit this failure. Death was a good option – and it got better by the day.”
Brilliant blazing minds on fire, when faced with severe obstacles and resistance, often get frustrated and impatient. Any goal seems insurmountable. The road seems exhausting, long. Check out what some founders have said.
Founders' Voices
As we were going to bed, my spouse – a founder – muttered, “Sometimes I think it would be a lot easier if I didn't wake up tomorrow morning …”
The idea of suicide changed from a comforting option to a constant yet terrifying urge …
My head was filled with thoughts of suicide – that I was thinking about it in some form or another all the time shook me up … felt like a vice clamped around my head.
To the young who want to die
-Gwendolyn Brooks
Sit down. Inhale. Exhale.
The gun will wait. The lake will wait.
The tall gall in the small seductive vial
will wait will wait:
will wait a week: will wait through April.
You do not have to die this certain day.
Death will abide, will pamper your postponement. I assure you death will wait. Death has
a lot of time. Death can
attend to you tomorrow. Or next week. Death is just down the street; is most obliging neighbor; can meet you any moment.
You need not die today.
Stay here – through pout or pain or peskyness.
Stay here. See what the news is going to be tomorrow.
Graves grow no green that you can use. Remember, green's your color. You are Spring.
What Drives Us to the Cliff – Is It Shame, Envy, or Powerlessness?
We never would fully know the range of emotions that drives founders to the cliff. One can speculate, a bit too simplistically, that a faltering self-image is one factor – that we no longer see ourselves as brave, bold, and skilled. We are disillusioned with our inabilities, expectations, and the world's incessant demands. We pull over to the side of the road. The state of helplessness spirals, often oscillating between disappointment and anger. We become harsh on our own selves. Suicide becomes a form of protest, revenge, and/or appeal.
In a rapid-paced world, the fastest runner, the unicorn-bagging CEO, becomes the hero. But very few get there, and for the vast majority who don't, the self-image crumbles. “This state of shame and envy is followed by self-destructive impulses … the suffering ego wants to do away with the self in order to wipe out the offending, disappointing reality of failure … the self-destructive impulses are to be understood here as the expression of narcissistic rage,” writes psychoanalyst Heinz Kohut. Founders have to be mildly narcissistic, and believe that their images, their views can change the world. When faced with resistance, this perspective and energy turns dark, angry, a rage when it does not meet its self-appointed goals.
Those who may have started off on the hero's journey may soon feel powerless against the stagnant forces of the market adoption risks, technology stasis, and fickleness of investors, who were chasing the next big thing. Mark probably felt weak and helpless. And his identity was so attached to his start-up, unable to separate the two, he decided to end it all.
Vulnerable Egos and High Expectations
Founders hold themselves to high expectations – statements like make a dent in the world are a part of their daily dialogue. The chasm between their expectations and outcomes may be wide, and the resources required to build the bridge or cross this chasm may not be available, but that does not scare nor stop them.
To propel the founder to greater heights, a self-image of a hero is an essential mind hack. As one VC told me, every founder aspiring to change the world should first believe that they can do it; that they have the courage, the magical powers to pick the right direction, to influence others, to gather resources and deploy these effectively; to persist and stay the course. We are often unaware how we subconsciously build and shape our belief systems. In building our belief systems, a healthy self-image is an asset. It helps us pick aspirational goals, but our ability to manage our own psychological barriers becomes a hurdle. Inflated self-images combined with vulnerable egos can make us our own worst enemies. We tend to be overly favorable in our self-view in many domains, as the Dunning-Kruger effect shows us.
SELF-IMAGE AND INEPTITUDE
McArthur Wheeler robbed two banks in Pittsburgh in broad daylight. He had worn neither a mask nor any form of disguise and was promptly arrested in a few hours. It was not just incompetence but lack of application of knowledge of lemon juice. Wheeler was under the flawed impression that applying lemon juice to his face made him invisible to the video surveillance cameras. Thanks to this inspiration and case of stupidity, researchers David Dunning and Justin Kruger went on to publish a fascinating study, “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments.”3
The summary of the study is quite simple. We think we are way smarter than we actually are. And because of such inflated self-images we tend to make stupid choices. Like rubbing
