To everyone new this week: welcome. You being here means more than you know. Knowing it lands with someone like you keeps me going.
I'm Lavena Xu-Johnson. I write about psychology for founders. Why? Because scaling a business means scaling ourselves first.
Happy Tuesday, founders,
It’s been one of those grey, rainy days in London, and I’ll admit, my usual optimism feels just a little out of reach today. A bit… dimmed.
It happens. To all of us.
“It’s only a perspective,” I remind myself
The early weeks of change, building, re-building, or scaling often start with such high levels of excitement. Ideas are electric. People are excited. You feel aligned, in motion, on purpose.
Then, without warning, it dips. Momentum slows. Doubts creep in.
You’re not alone.
This dip has a name. Psychologists call it the Emotional Cycle of Change.
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🧠 The science behind the slump
Originally developed by Don Kelley and Daryl Conner (1979), the Emotional Cycle of Change outlines five predictable emotional stages people go through when facing a major life or business change:
Kelley, Don, and Daryl R. Conner. "The emotional cycle of change." The 1979 annual handbook for group facilitators. San Diego: University Associates (1979): 117-22.
Uninformed Optimism - The high of a fresh start, full of possibilities.
Informed Pessimism - Reality sets in. Problems appear. Motivation starts to fade.
Valley of Despair - The lowest point emotionally. Self-doubt creeps in.
Informed Optimism - You begin to find your rhythm. Problems don’t feel as personal.
Success and Fulfillment - The rewards of perseverance start to appear.
Most people quit during the Valley of Despair. And many founders cycle back to stage one - launching new things before the old ones bear fruit.
🔍Why this matters for founders
When you're building a startup, you go through this cycle repeatedly. With each new hire, product release, and fundraising round, you hit a new valley.
But because the entrepreneurial world idolizes speed and success, no one tells you how normal the despair phase is.
You start thinking something is wrong with you.
You overwork or underfunction.
You blame yourself. Or your co-founder. Or your product.
But the truth is: this emotional dip is a phase, not a verdict.
And how you relate to that dip, how you frame it in your mind, determines whether you spiral… or break through.
🪞 Reframing the trough with learned optimism
Psychologist Martin Seligman, the father of positive psychology, coined the term learned optimism as an antidote to helplessness. His research showed that people who view setbacks as:
temporary (not permanent),
specific (not all-encompassing), and
external (not entirely their fault),
were more likely to persevere and succeed.
In other words, your self-talk during hard moments matters more than the moment itself.
In one longitudinal study, Seligman and colleagues found that optimistic salespeople outperformed pessimists by 56%, not because they faced fewer rejections, but because they didn’t internalize them (Seligman, 1991 ).
More than building a company, as founders, we build narratives.
We decide what a bad month means. Whether it’s a signal to pivot or a reason to quit. Whether rejection confirms we’re frauds - or that we’re on the edge of something brave.
And that narrative, crafted in the quiet, not in the metrics, is what makes the difference between those who burn out and those who break through.
👀 Practical tools for the trough
If you're in the valley, here’s how to work with it:
Name the stage: Simply recognizing you’re in a temporary emotional low can reduce its power.
Document your dips: Keep a “Valley Log” - a journal of past troughs and how you got through them.
Reframe setbacks with Seligman’s 3Ps:
Not Personal → "This isn’t all on me."
Not Permanent → "This phase won’t last forever."
Not Pervasive → "One area struggling doesn’t mean it’s all failing."
Don’t add new decisions: When in doubt, pause before pivoting. Most pivots made in emotional lows are actually escape plans.
Talk to someone outside the trough: We often need another person’s perspective to remind us that the mountain is still there - just hidden by fog.
💡 This week’s reflection
If you’re feeling off, stuck, or uncertain, ask yourself:
> Am I making decisions from the trough?
> Or am I just in it?
And remember - no one talks about the middle because it’s not shiny. But it’s where endurance is built. It’s where the real work happens. It’s where founders are made.
You don’t have to love the valley. But if you learn to walk through it, you’ll always be ahead of the ones still running from it.
PS. I’m on X! Let’s give each other a follow:
Saras Sarasvathy’s Effectuation Theory (2001) showed that successful entrepreneurs rarely think in terms of expected return on investment.
Instead of obsessing over the odds of success, they develop an "affordable loss" mindset, and ask: “What can I afford to lose?”
— #Lavena Xu-Johnson (#@iamlavena)
9:43 AM • Jul 22, 2025
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Until next week,
Lavena
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