Beyond Survival: Finding Your David in the Marble
#106 Angelinvesting.it - From idea to Series A - Weekly Newsletter
3 minutes to reflect
The Power of Divine Discomfort
I remember exactly when it hit me. Our business was failing, and suddenly I was wide awake. No more going through the motions. No more business as usual. Every morning felt electric, every decision carried weight, every small victory tasted like triumph.
I gave it everything. Not just time and energy, but that raw, visceral drive that emerges when you're fighting for survival. The divine discomfort of possible failure transformed into pure creative force.
The Problem with a Full Tummy
Then we stabilized the business. Success should have felt like victory. Instead, it felt like sedation. Like a lion after a big meal, my ambition lay drowsy and content. The electric tension between discomfort and creation had dissolved into comfortable routine.
It taught me something profound about human nature: we need that tension. Not the fake urgency of arbitrary deadlines, but that genuine spark between what unsettles us and what drives us to create.
Chasing Discomfort in the Gap Between Today's Reality and Future Potential
Some find this tension through necessity, like I did during our crisis. Others - the truly remarkable ones - find it in a deeper place. Like Michelangelo seeing the angel trapped in the marble block, they feel the divine discomfort in the gap between what is and what could be. Their hunger isn't driven by fear of failure, but by the relentless vision of possibility.
2 resources to advance to pro
1. The divine discomfort
Michelangelo wasn't just a skilled sculptor - he was obsessed with what could be. When others saw a block of marble, he saw an angel trapped inside. This wasn't romantic posturing; it was his reality. He worked until his hands bled not because he had to, but because he couldn't bear to leave that angel imprisoned in stone. This is divine discomfort at its purest: not the stress of deadlines or fear of failure, but the unbearable tension between present reality and possible beauty.
2. The Comfort Trap
Success is a sneaky sedative. It doesn't kill ambition instantly - it soothes it to sleep slowly, comfortably, pleasantly. This is why so many great companies become mediocre ones: they mistake achieving their vision for completing their journey.
The truly remarkable maintain their hunger not because they have to, but because they can't imagine not pushing further. They're not driven by the fear of losing what they have, but by the vision of what could still be.
1 reason to smile
Creation is the cure to divine discomfort and it is nothing more than a healthy habit
GO BUILD!
Simone