Why Hitting Rock-Bottom Might be the Best Thing That Happens to You

The Story of Walt Disney

Recognize this man?

I suspect not. It’s Mr.Walt Disney, the man who started perhaps the biggest media company in the world— Disney Studios.

However, his rise to the top wasn’t very smooth.

Walt Disney lost his first job as an artist. After which, he and his friend—Ub Iwerk— started a company which failed. But these weren’t the worst things he faced.

He and Ub tried again. They created a full-fledged studio, known as ‘The Laugh-O-Gram Studios’. It’s entertaining two-minute animations made Walt Disney a local celebrity.

Now he wanted to do something bigger—make a longer seven-minute film.

It was difficult. During that time he was evicted and was left to sleep on the studio floor, that too surviving only on canned beans, and showering only once a week at the train station.

Despite all of this effort, the company went bankrupt.

That was his first encounter with Mr.Rock Bottom. He was, in fact, so broke he couldn’t even buy a train ticket.

However, being the irrational optimist he was, he eventually got back on his feet and started Disney Studios with his brother. They got animators, and a distributor and released Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, and it became the industry gold standard.

He built a new house, things were going well.

Seeing the success of this cartoon he goes to Mintz (his distributor) to negotiate a better deal, which obviously he’ll get. Or at least that’s what he thinks. But it only brings him to his worst catastrophe yet.

Mintz (the distributor) thinks the opposite. He thinks Walt is useless while and that he’s the real genius behind Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.

He believed Walt was a useless middle man, because he was the one who distributed the cartoon, while the animators made the cartoon. He didn’t see the need for Walt Disney.

Mintz even stole the rights to the cartoon through clever contracts and even secretly hired Disney’s animators. He basically stole the company from Disney.

With no cartoons, employees, or deals Disney was at ground zero.

The usually optimistic and buoyant Disney loses it now; he only screams on the train on the way home.

He wants to prove to Mintz that he was the actual creative genius and guiding force behind the cartoon’s success. Left with only a sketchpad he decides to draw up a new cartoon, one with a mouse.

It happened to be none other than (you guessed it) Mickey Mouse!

Mickey mouse was a huge hit.

And the rest is history.

Steve Jobs faced something similar. He was kicked out of Apple, the very company he built. But it led him to build one of the greatest animation studios ever—Pixar!

As the saying goes “If you’re at rock bottom there’s only one way to go that is— up”

The lesson: if you want to do something big, not only do you have to be willing to go to rock bottom, it might even be a necessity.

Voluntary Poverty

"Set aside a certain number of days, during which you shall be content with the scantiest and cheapest fare, with coarse and rough dress, saying to yourself the while: 'Is this the condition that I feared?'"
— Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, Letter 18

There’s this stoic idea of voluntary discomfort or voluntary poverty.

It’s letting go of the comforts in your life like good food, good clothes, or your phone. Either it’ll teach you life is not too bad without them or you actually gain appreciation for things you otherwise take for granted.

It’s a way of getting some of the rock bottom benefits without actually being at rock bottom.

The Importance of Pain

Sometimes only rock bottom times make us change.

I’ll give you an example:

If you have horrible hip pain and can’t move it, you’ll probably get it checked, and treated, and follow a rehab routine that might even make you more flexible than before you began.

But if it were just mild hip pain even if it were there for months, you’d probably just ignore it or resort to short-term remedies for relief, instead of actually fixing it.

So that’s it for this article, that’s why hitting the bottom down might be what you need!

Thanks for reading :)

PS: I’m off the internet till Dec 12 and will be able to respond to ur msgs only then.