Gary Ong | November 6th, 2021

Have you ever had a nightmare from which you wake up screaming? Even after you wake up, you can feel your chest pounding. There’s heavy breathing. You might even be covered in cold sweat. The threat wasn’t real, but your response certainly was.

Working at a startup can often feel like a dream job. On the good days, we appreciate the autonomy, impactful work and the privilege of working with people who share our vision of the world. But on the bad days, it can also feel like a bad dream. We start worrying about deadlines we haven’t yet missed, or reports we haven’t yet written. We get concerned about technical goals slipping, or funding milestones being unmet. We regret our mistakes from the past, and we wished we had done even better on our prior successes. In short, the past looks like failure and the future looks like a house of cards waiting to tumble. It’s a nightmare but it’s one you cannot seem to wake up from.

When you’re in a nightmare, the most important thing to do is to wake yourself up. You wake up by refocusing on the present. Take a deep breath. Feel the Earth beneath your feet, and the coolness in the air as you breathe in. Take this invitation to return to the present. Recognize that today is not the past, and today is not the future. Today is today, and you are here. You are here.