Why Starting Always Feels Worse Before Getting Better
This universal principle operates across domains: fitness, business, habit formation, investing. Its difficulty stems from our innate expectation of immediate improvement. When we begin investing, we anticipate rapid growth. When changing habits, we expect instant ease. When launching ventures, we envision quick success. Reality proves harsher: initial steps frequently deliver the unsettling sensation that things have deteriorated.
The Universal Discomfort of Beginning
When you start saving, disposable income shrinks. Friends spend freely while you exercise restraint. Your choices appear to deprive you of life’s enjoyment. When you begin investing, markets may immediately decline. You allocate capital only to watch values drop, triggering thoughts like “Why did I start? At least before everything remained stable.” When implementing new strategies, initial months feel empty and pointless because results remain invisible.
The Startup Trap: Feeling Backward Movement
This represents the universal startup trap: the perception of regression. Everything feels worse initially. Yet everyone who eventually achieves freedom must navigate this discomfort phase. “Worse” isn’t permanent condemnation—it’s restructuring phase.
Parallels Across Different Domains
- Fitness: Muscle soreness precedes strength gains
- Business: Initial losses often precede profitability
- Learning: Confusion comes before mastery
- Investing: Portfolio declines often precede substantial growth
The Fitness-Investing Correlation
Recall exercise beginnings. Your first gym session brings pain and exhaustion. Your body feels worse than before. Yet this discomfort triggers muscle development and endurance building. Finance follows identical patterns: the initial phase proves most awkward because you’re breaking established habits while constructing new systems.
The Investment-Specific Challenge
Long-term investing magnifies this principle. You save consistently, invest systematically, yet watch charts decline. Mental chatter whispers: “Why continue? I should have purchased something enjoyable instead.” Here your financial destiny determines itself. After “worse” consistently comes “after.” After means growth. After means results. After means freedom crowds never attain because they surrendered during difficulty.
The Strategic Mindset for Navigating Beginnings
Long-term investors accept this principle as game rules. They recognize starts won’t feel comfortable. It will seem like losing rather than gaining. Like depriving yourself of joy. Like pointless effort. Yet this exact phase forges resilience. Everyone who perseveres through “worse” eventually collects “after” rewards.
The Breakthrough Phase
Eventually arrives the moment capital works independently. When saving becomes automatic. When markets surviving declines deliver growth fruits. Then emerges internal confidence: you no longer fear crises because you understand their temporariness. Then arrives freedom unpurchasable by today’s emotions.
Millionaires understand this secret: everything significant initially resembles error. Initially everything seems worse. But after—specifically after—reveals this was the only correct path. Remember: beginnings always feel difficult. There will be pain, discomfort, and perceived backward steps. If you persevere, you’ll eventually awaken realizing this phase was necessary. Because specifically through “worse” you arrive at “better.”
In the beginning, everything feels worse than before. But eventually comes better than you ever imagined possible. The most valuable achievements always demand payment in initial discomfort—and the investors who understand this truth eventually collect dividends far exceeding their early struggles.
