Just ONE Thing
How Far Will You Fall Before You Hit Rock Bottom?
Episode 274
with Rick White, 180BIZ
Good morning. My name is Rick White from 180BIZ, and this is my Just One Thing. What I wanna talk about today is rock bottom, okay?
Think about this for a second. This came up in a conversation last week, and it really got me thinking. See, when you hear the words rock bottom, what do you picture? Do you think bankruptcy? Do you think divorce? Do you think losing your business? Do you think addiction? Do you think losing everything?
See, we talk about rock bottom like it's a place, like you keep falling until you eventually hit it. But here's the thing. What if rock bottom were defined by a certain event or circumstance? If rock bottom was a physical place, wouldn't it be pretty much the same for everybody? Think about that for a second.
Rock bottom isn't the same. One person loses everything before they say, "Enough." Another person misses their daughter's recital and says, "You know something? I'm never doing that again." Neither person is better or worse. What I'm getting at here, and I really want you to hear this, is everyone's rock bottom is different.
So I'm starting to think rock bottom isn't defined by what happens to you. Rock bottom is the point where you decide you're not going any further down. But see, that raises another question. A lot of people talk about falling and rock bottom, but I don't see it as that.
I see it as a spiral. You're either spiraling down or you're spiraling up. So if rock bottom is where the spiral stops, what is the spiral down start? I think it begins when you start accepting something that violates a rule, an expectation, a standard, or falls short of the potential you know is possible.
Maybe you got a rule, "I'm not going into debt to run this business," and then you do. Maybe there's an exception, "My business should be able to pay me," but then it can't. Maybe there's a standard, "This is how we treat our customers," and then you start accepting less because you can't find good help.
Maybe it's your potential. Maybe it's you knowing what your business could become, and you're settling for far less. You don't have to be in a crisis to start spiraling down. Things can look pretty good from the outside while you're moving further and further away from where you know you should or could be.
That's the spiral. Spirals can happen anywhere: your business, your money, your marriage, your family, your health, your relationships, your faith, your own personal growth. So don't just ask yourself, "Is this part of my life good or bad?" Ask yourself, "Which direction are you going? Are you moving towards what you believe this could or should be, or are you moving down, away from it?"
That's how you start recognizing the spiral, the fall. And here's where it really gets interesting. If you recognize the violation, why don't you immediately do something about it? And I really think it's because something is usually feeding your tolerance. You're tolerating the spiral. Sometimes it's fear.
It's a fear of confrontation, knowing you need to have a conversation, but you don't want the potential conflict. Maybe it's a fear of judgment. "What are my employees gonna think, my family and my friends?" Maybe it's a fear of failure. "What happens if I try to change this and it doesn't work?" Sometimes it's attachment.
Now, some people call it comfort. A lot of times it's not comfort, it's familiar. Like, when somebody's going through something and tolerating it because it's familiar. They don't like it, but they know they can deal with it. So it actually is a safer choice.
Maybe it's a habit. Maybe you feel loyal. Maybe you've just put so much money or time into something, you don't feel like you can walk away. This isn't good, but it's familiar. I've already invested too much to stop now. And sometimes it's emotion. It's guilt, it's greed, it's hope.
Maybe I'm expecting too much. I really need to make payroll this week, so I'm gonna stretch this bill, or I'm gonna charge them for something that didn't work. You gotta understand, tolerance, right? The spiral, hitting rock bottom, it's one small cut at a time. It's one small compromise at a time that becomes the norm and becomes bigger and bigger, right?
And in the beginning, none of them sound horrible. In fact, some of them can even sound positive. But they can all do the same thing. They convince you to tolerate one more violation, and then another and another, until something you once said you'd never accept has now become normal. The violation didn't disappear.
I think that this is what determines the depth of someone's rock bottom. The more you're willing to tolerate, the farther you're going to fall. So when you recognize that something's moving in the wrong direction, don't just ask what's wrong. Ask, what am I tolerating?
And then what's feeding my tolerance? Because that may be what's actually keeping the fall going. Here's the scary thing about falling. There's almost another level down. You think, "Oh, it's just not rock bottom yet." That's what started this, right? The conversation was, "Well, I haven't hit rock bottom yet."
And what I got them to understand is, look, you can lose another 50K. You can spend another year miserable. You can damage your relationships a little bit more. You can get a little less healthy. You can lower the standard one more time.
You can even move further away from what your potential is. So if you're waiting for life to tell you, "Okay, you've officially hit rock bottom, it's time to stop," you might be waiting for a long time because life doesn't decide where your rock bottom is. You do. You decide this is far enough. I'm not doing this anymore.
I'm not lowering my standard again. I'm not continuing actions that are hurting me. Listen, we all do this. For me, when I'm starting to spiral down, it's when I start checking out. When I start burying myself in doom scrolling or playing games on my phone to the point where it's just I'm either awake working or playing, then there's a problem.
I recognize that I'm avoiding. That's how I understand that I'm spiraling down in one area of my life. I hope this is really hitting with you guys. This was a hard conversation to come up with, and there was some truths that I had to kind of face when I was writing this.
Sometimes I, I put this stuff together and it's for me, not for you. But I think it helps, right? So I need you to understand, you gotta be able to say to yourself, "I'm not avoiding the conversation anymore. I'm not allowing what someone else thinks about me to control my choices." Listen, everybody's, at some point, is gonna judge you.
Do you, be you, go for what you are here to do, what you want. I'm not calling inaction hope. And I'm not saying staying somewhere simply because it's comfortable. I'm not allowing situations, circumstances, events, or other people to dictate what I believe is possible.
Does that decision immediately fix it? Nope. You may have a hell of a climb ahead of you, right? You gotta start going up. But you stopped the fall, and that's what makes the bottom the bottom. You don't need to see the achievement to feel like a winner.
All you've gotta be able to see is progress. When you stop the fall, when you stop that downward spiral and you say, "Enough. That's it. No more," and you start to go back up, you're gonna feel like a million bucks. Yeah, man, you got a lot of work ahead of you. You got some stuff to push through, some relationships to mend, whatever that looks like.
But you know what happens at the end? At the end, you feel like you're moving forward. You feel like you have control. You feel like you are the hero, not the victim in your story, and you keep pushing, and you keep going. Because each and every one of us is here to create a life, not react to stuff. We're here to create.
Good morning, Jeremiah. I want you to step back and reflect. Take a look at each of the different areas of your life. Don't ask whether they're good or bad. Ask, "Which direction am I going? Am I spiraling up and moving closer to where I wanna go, or am I spiraling down and moving away from one of my rules, one of my expectations, one of my standards that I believe in and that I wanna live by?
"And then where am I settling for less than the potential that that's possible for me?"
So which direction am I going is the first question. Second question is what am I tolerating? What's feeding that tolerance? And then finally, how much further are you willing to go? Because you don't have to wait until you lose everything.
You don't have to wait until there's nowhere left to fall, and you don't have to justify your bottom by comparing it to someone else's. The violation starts the spiral down. What feeds your tolerance keeps that spiral going. Your tolerance determines how far that spiral goes down, but your decision defines rock bottom.
See, rock bottom isn't where you can't go any lower. It's where you decide you won't. So please step back. Look at your life. Find out where you're kinda going down.
Where are you settling? Where you're not pushing, stressing to become the very best, and see what you can do about it. If this really sh- hits home, Brenda will put the calendar link in here, where you can sit down and reach out, and we can just talk if you're having a hard time with this.
Sometimes you just get so far into the downward spiral, you need an outside perspective to help you with this. So if you want more, Brenda just put that link in there. If you wanna make a time to sit down and talk, let's just talk about it.
Thank you. I appreciate that. I gotta tell you, you can ask Brenda, I spent almost a whole week really stressing about this conversation.
I'm not a psychiatrist, a psychologist, any kinda ist, therapist or anything like that. But I really, really work hard on kinda pulling things out and looking at 'em. So I appreciate that. This was a hard one today. But again, feel free. I really appreciate you coming in. Take care, and let's rock and roll.
