Act Like A Winner - 4 Things The People Don't Tell You About Success
Author: Fast Company
When Laura Gassner Otting’s first “big idea” book, Limitless: How to Ignore Everybody, Carve Your Own Path, and Live Your Best Life, came out in 2019, it debuted at No. 2 on The Washington Post best seller list, right behind Michelle Obama’s book Becoming. The success was greater than she expected, and it led to lots of speaking invitations.
“I had done a keynote where I was an opener for [Nobel Peace Prize laureate] Malala [Yousafzai],” she recalls. “I was on the plane home and thought, ‘This is amazing. It’s exciting. It’s humbling. What else can I do?’”
The visions of what could be suddenly gave way to anxiety, stress, and impostor syndrome. “All those things that happen when you imagine a version of yourself that you didn’t know was quite possible,” she says. “It was wonderful, but it was also kind of hell. It was ‘wonderhell.’”
While promoting her book, Gassner Otting met other people who had achieved high levels of success. Asking them about their experience, she was stunned that feelings of self-doubt were common.
“I had 100 different conversations with glass-ceiling shatters, Olympic medalists, unicorns, CEOs, and everyday people,” she says. “Each time, I expected somebody was going to have the answer. But every single one of these people at every age and at every stage had the same experience. Each one of them had the moment of ‘wonderhell,’ where it’s amazing and exciting—and then they’re not sure what to do next.”
Gassner Otting’s new book, Wonderhell: Why Success Doesn’t Feel Like It Should . . . and What to Do About It, delves into this phenomenon to address the downside of success. Along the way, she discovered ways to view achievements that can help you avoid landing in wonderhell.
