Last week I was in Iowa taking my mom to have a basal cell carcinoma removed.
Two nights before her MOHS procedure, my mom didn’t sleep. Probably more nights than that, actually.
Not because anything had gone wrong. Nothing had happened yet.
But in her mind, everything had.
Imagining the Worst, Over and Over
She imagined it taking all day. She imagined complications. She imagined having problems with getting there, with her oxygen, with forgetting to bring her medication. She imagined getting home late at night, exhausted and shaken.
The procedure itself is done in stages. They remove tissue, test it, wait, repeat if necessary. Which means you don’t know how long you’ll be there.
That uncertainty is what kept her awake.
The morning came. We got out of the house, into the car, I drove to the appointment, about an hour away. No catastrophes so far.
The surgery went as smoothly as it could have. One round of tissue removal, testing came back clean, and they stitched her up and sent us on our way.
(And thanks to Halcyon, she got a very needed nap while we waited for the testing.)
We walked out at 2:00 pm.
All that worry was natural. And unnecessary.
Founders Do This Every Day
What my mom did reminds me of what I’ve done and what I have seen my founder clients do.
You don’t know how long the board conversation will take. You don’t know how the investor will react. You don’t know how the reorg will land.
So your mind fills in the blanks.
Worst-case timelines. Worst-case reactions. Worst-case outcomes.
You lose sleep over meetings that haven’t happened. You rehearse arguments that never occur. You brace for disaster that never arrives.
The uncertainty becomes the suffering. And strangely, we would rather live the event in our heads 1000 times in advance than trust our capacity to simply be present in the moment. Many of our rehearsals are far worse than what actually happens. We call it planning, but in the words of coach Michael Neill, it’s really “making shit up to be scared of.”
Here’s what I noticed watching my mom:
The mind hates open loops. It wants certainty, even if that certainty is negative. But most of the time, reality is far more ordinary than the imagination.
The procedure happens. The conversation happens. The decision gets made.
The fear wasn’t foolish. It was human, a program that runs because very occasionally, it’s useful.
But it wasn’t predictive. Or even, in her case, helpful.
What You Actually Fear
If you’re a founder right now, staring at something uncertain, notice this:
You’re not afraid of the event. You’re afraid of the movie your mind is projecting about the event.
Movies feel real at 2 a.m. Especially when they keep looping. But they are not evidence.
Sometimes the bravest move isn’t solving the uncertainty.
It’s walking into it without rehearsing catastrophe. Knowing you have the innate ability to figure things out.
How Long Are You Willing to Delay?
My mom knew she had an issue. She waited a year to go to the doctor.
You’ve probably been waiting, too.
Something you know you need to do, but you think if you analyze, if you wait for the “right time,” you can make sure it works out well.
You can’t know in advance. You can only know, or begin to know, once you take action.
How many times are you going to imagine the good, the bad, and the ugly before you take the action?
How likely is it that the actual result will be better than the one you’re scaring yourself with?
#PickNow