Issue #123 The Cycle Behind The Fall (And The 3 Ways To Interrupt It)

Written By: Brad Pedersen

Last week I wrote about the cycle that pride and greed quietly set in motion; how success can distort the map we navigate by, how the playbook that once drove growth can eventually accelerate decline, and how by the time we recognize it, we’re often already deep inside it. If you missed it, you can catch up here.

This week, I want to pick up where that left off, because what comes next is the part no one really prepares you for.

The Turn

As we referenced last week, ancient scripture reminds us that “pride goes before the fall.” The reality, however, is that the fall rarely happens all at once, and that’s what makes it so difficult to recognize in real time. At each stage, we tell ourselves a story that keeps the situation feeling temporary, manageable, not yet serious enough to fully confront. It’s only in hindsight that the pattern reveals itself with clarity.

So what is the pattern?

First comes confusion. The genuine kind, where the gap between what you expected and what is actually happening feels like an anomaly, not the start of a pattern.

Then defensiveness begins to creep in. Instead of trying to understand what’s happening, you start trying to explain it away. You make a few adjustments. You tell others, and yourself, that it’s been a growth experience, and part of you truly believes that.

But underneath that honest reflection is a quieter realization you’re not yet ready to face: that the story you built your identity around may not be as true as it once felt.

Eventually, the numbers stop aligning with the story you’ve been telling yourself. You reach a moment many recall with uncomfortable clarity, when the gap between what you’re defending and what you’re actually living becomes too wide to ignore.

And once it lands, the questioning begins; of yourself, your beliefs, your values. The foundation you once stood on with confidence starts to feel less certain, as doubt quietly works its way in. And that is when the shift happens. 

The same mind that once refused to acknowledge downside when things were going well now struggles to see any upside. What began as quiet optimism gives way to a defensive pessimism that is held with the same level of certainty but is equally as blind. The direction has changed, but our distortion of reality remains.

Roosevelt once said that the only thing to fear is fear itself, and I believe it is one of the most precise observations ever made about how the human mind works. When your greatest fear becomes not knowing what else you should be afraid of, clarity disappears and inaction quietly takes its place.

At the peak you believed nothing could go wrong and now in the valley you believe nothing can go right. Different emotions, but the same distortion of perspective; and in both cases, equally disconnected from the truth.

The Reset Nobody Warns You About

J.K. Rowling once said, “Rock bottom can be a great foundation to build from,” and in my experience, that has proven to be true. There are few things more humbling, clarifying, or introspective than finding yourself in a season marked by uncertainty, ambiguity, and complexity. And yet, it is often in that very place that the seeds of new potential are planted, shaped by the lessons we’ve been forced to learn.

But here is what I find most interesting (and most humbling) about the full arc of this cycle. When you come through it, when the fear lifts and you’ve done the slow, unglamorous work of rebuilding, you carry a different kind of clarity. One that feels earned in a way earlier success never quite did.

Your view of reality sharpens.

Your humility deepens.

Your understanding of people, markets, and yourself becomes more grounded.

And over time, you begin to realize just how valuable that clarity actually is.

In many ways, it’s worth more than anything gained during the ascent. Because it doesn’t just change how you operate in business; it reshapes how you show up in every part of your life that endured the storm alongside you.

Which is what makes what comes next so easy to miss. The hidden danger is that if we are not careful, the lessons we earn through hardship quietly become the foundation for the next cycle.

We begin to believe that because we paid the price and did the work, we’ve earned the right to be right. That effort should equal reward; and that belief, as innocent as it sounds, is exactly where pride begins to take root again.

Stopping The Cycle

The cycle does not end on its own, it has to be interrupted and to do so requires three things that do not come naturally to most of the leaders, myself included:

1. Humility

The first is humility, and I want to be careful here because humility is one of the most misunderstood words in the leadership vocabulary. Humility is not weakness, quietness or refusing to take a compliment.

C.S. Lewis captured it well when he described humility not as thinking less of yourself, but as thinking of yourself less.  What that means is humility is not about shrinking, softening, or pretending your accomplishments did not happen. Rather it is the quiet reorientation of attention away from protecting your position, toward staying grounded and genuinely curious about what you might still be missing.

In practice, humility shows up in small, often uncomfortable ways. It means asking questions even when you think you already know the answer. It means sitting with feedback that challenges you instead of dismissing it. And it means giving proper credit to timing, to grace, and to the people around you.

For many accomplished leaders, our identity has been built around being capable and being right, which makes this harder than it sounds. Humility requires a different kind of security, one that isn’t dependent on the scoreboard validating who we believe we are. 

In my experience, that kind of security isn’t something we create on our own; it’s formed and strengthened in relationship with others.

2. People Who Tell You the Truth

Which leads to the second thing that interrupts the cycle, which is deliberate cultivation of truth-telling relationships.  I use the word “deliberate’ carefully, because these relationships do not happen by accident.

As leaders accumulate success, the circle around them begins to quietly shift. People who once challenged them start to defer. Feedback gets softened and disagreement begins to feel risky for those who once offered it freely.

It rarely happens all at once.

It’s more like the familiar analogy of the frog in water. If you drop a frog into boiling water, it will jump out immediately. But if you place it in cool water and slowly raise the temperature, it will stay, unaware of the danger, until it’s too late.

Likewise as a leader becomes more accomplished, the environment around them starts to change; not through any single decision, but through a series of small, almost imperceptible shifts. Over time, those changes compound; until suddenly they find themselves cut off from the very feedback essential to remain grounded.

I’ve seen this in my own life and in many leaders I deeply respect.  It’s comfortable to surround ourselves with people who reinforce how we already see the world, but it is far more valuable to be around those who would challenge us. 

This doesn’t happen by accident. It requires intentionally creating space for truth and inviting a small number of people who have earned the right to challenge you to do so regularly.These are not people who flatter you, rather they are people who care enough about you, to say what is difficult. And when they do, it requires humility to listen with openness that they may be seeing something you cannot.  

That’s why a carefully curated peer group is so powerful; but not if it becomes a place to impress or to search for answers.  Its real value comes from being surrounded by people who are both authentic and willing to be vulnerable, creating a kind of mirror into your life that you could not access on your own.

3. Gratitude as a Corrective Lens

The third element is gratitude, and I want to make a distinction here that I think matters.

Gratitude is not a feeling we wait for, rather it is a practice we choose.  For high-achieving leaders, it is one of the most countercultural choices available to us, because everything in our environment rewards the posture of not enough, not yet, and not quite there. 

Everything is created twice; first in our minds and then we work to bring our imagination to reality. As such we spend much of our time living in the future. 

And as people who live in the future, we are constantly focused on the next deal, the next milestone and the next level. The horizon keeps moving and we keep moving along with it.  This is how ambition works and it is also why it has been helpful in allowing us to achieve our current level of results. However it can also become hurtful if it is the only view of the world that we carry. 

Gratitude interrupts the cycle by grounding us in the recognition that what we already have was once something we hoped for. It creates space between what we’ve achieved and what comes next, and in that space, perspective has a chance to return.

It also requires a shift. A recalibration. The recognition that the fuel that served us in one season of life may not be the fuel we need in this one.

This isn’t about denying ambition, but about learning to channel it differently. The drive that once pushed us forward doesn’t disappear, it matures. It is learning to hold two things at once: the ambition to keep building (fueled by purpose rather than pressure) and the ability to genuinely appreciate what has already been built. When those are in balance, it creates a kind of steadiness that neither the highs of success nor the lows of fear can easily disrupt..

The Question Beneath the Cycle

There is a question I have come to believe sits beneath all of this, one that the cycle of pride, greed and fear circle without ever quite answering.

It is not how do I avoid failing again?

Nor is it  how will I protect what I have built?

Rather it is something deeper and more fundamental: Am I becoming the kind of person that the people around me are genuinely better off for having me in their life?

That question has a way of doing what no strategy or framework can fully do on its own. It keeps us oriented toward something larger than our own personal performance. 

It makes humility feel less like a discipline and more like a natural response to recognizing how much of what has happened in our life is beyond us. And it makes gratitude feel less like an obligation and more like the only honest response to a life that, for all its difficulty, has given us so much.

But here is what experience has taught me: Very few of us can hold that question well on our own.

Left to ourselves, we drift and we justify, slowly rebuilding the same patterns we said we wouldn’t return to. Why?  Because we lack awareness that is created by the kind of environment that keeps us anchored in it.

That is why the leaders I respect most have not just developed self discipline; they have built outer support structures around their lives that protect it.  They have people who tell them the truth and have created spaces to provide the necessary feedback before the cycle runs too far.

In other words, they understand that growth doesn’t happen in isolation, so they don’t try to interrupt the cycle alone. They know this is part of the human condition; the cycle will return.

For most of us, it already has.

The difference isn’t whether it shows up, but whether we’ve built the kind of life and community that helps us recognize it sooner and respond to it more honestly.

So this week, sit with these questions:

Who are the two or three people in your life who have genuine permission to tell you something hard, and when did you last hear from them?

Where might gratitude for what you already fill a void that through striving you are trying to fill?

Knowing pride comes before the fall, what would it look like to build your life around the kind of humility that keeps you from having to learn lessons the hard way again?

If this message resonated and you’re realizing that you're in a season like this and it isn't something you want to navigate alone, that’s exactly why we built Full Spectrum.

It’s a guided mastermind for leaders who have already achieved much, but are now asking deeper questions; not just striving for more financial results.

If you’re ready to move beyond striving and begin truly thriving then we’d love to explore that with you.

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