The Illusion of Force
Every founder I know wants something deeply. Funding. Growth. The first 1,000 users. The right hire. A successful launch. A second chance.
And wanting something isn’t the problem. In fact, it’s necessary. Desire is what gets you to start. It gets you through the hard parts. It helps you endure.
But here’s the twist: sometimes the more we want something — the more intensely, the more desperately — the less likely it is to happen.
At first, this sounds wrong. We're taught to “hustle harder,” to “manifest,” to “never give up.” But if you’ve been through a startup (or through life), you’ve probably felt it: The job you really wanted that slipped away. The round you almost closed, but didn’t. The feature you over-engineered that no one used.
You did everything right. You pushed hard. You stayed up late. But still — it didn’t move.
Why?
“Excess Potential”: A Different Lens
Years ago, I found a book called Reality Transurfing by Vadim Zeland. It’s not a startup manual. It’s more philosophical. But one idea from it stuck with me and changed the way I work.
Zeland talks about excess potential. When we assign too much emotional weight to something — when we make it too important — we throw off the natural balance of how things unfold.
The world doesn’t like imbalance. So it reacts. The energy tightens. The thing you want starts to push away.
This isn’t superstition. You can observe it in real life:
– You’re too eager in a sales call, and the prospect pulls back. – You chase an investor too hard, and they disappear. – You obsess over the metrics every morning, and your anxiety makes every flat line feel like failure.
You’re not just “wanting.” You’re gripping. And people — systems, reality — react to that pressure.
Zeland's idea is that by wanting something too much, you actually block it. You’re adding friction where there should be flow.
Real-Life Startup Examples
I’ve seen this firsthand — not just in others, but in my own companies.
In one of my early startups, we built a beautiful MVP. I was convinced people would love it. We launched it with excitement, built all the dashboards, had email sequences ready. And… silence.
We refreshed metrics. We tweaked landing pages. We started adding features no one asked for. Each change was coming from the same place: we wanted it to work so badly that we weren’t listening anymore.
We were reacting, not learning. We were chasing, not building.
With ExoChat, I took a different approach. We still cared deeply. We still wanted to succeed. But we let go of the tension. We focused on the next useful step. We kept the goal visible — but didn’t demand that it arrive tomorrow.
And slowly, momentum started to build. Investors showed up. Conversations deepened. The product started speaking for itself.
Same effort. Different energy.
The Tallest Building in the City
Here’s the metaphor that helps me keep this mindset:
You’re standing in a city you don’t know. You look up and see the tallest building in the skyline. That’s your goal. You don’t have a map. You don’t know the streets. But you can see it — clearly. So you walk.
You take a left. It feels right. You go straight. There’s a block. You shift direction. You’re not forcing it. You’re responding. But you never lose sight of the building.
And here’s the key: if you stared at the building and refused to move until you had the full GPS route… you’d never get anywhere. The path is revealed in movement — not in overthinking.
That’s how goals work. You don’t get the full plan. You get the next step.
And the clarity of that next step often comes only when you release the pressure to have it all figured out.
From Control to Direction
Founders are good at control. We design systems. We fix bugs. We plan sprints. We track metrics.
But some parts of the journey — the big parts — don’t respond to control. You can’t force a market to move. You can’t force an investor to care. You can’t force a team into alignment.
What you can do is move in a clear direction, with calm confidence. That shift — from controlling to directing — changes everything.
When your energy is focused but not frantic, people trust you more. You attract the right collaborators. You make sharper decisions. You see opportunities you might’ve missed while panicking.
You’re not surrendering the goal — you’re surrendering the noise around it.
Letting Go Isn’t Giving Up
It’s easy to confuse letting go with giving up. But they’re not the same.
Letting go is releasing the tension — not the vision.
It’s saying: “I still want this. But I don’t need to strangle it into existence.” It’s trusting that action matters more than obsession. That progress comes from momentum, not mental loops.
And in startups, that mindset is survival. Because half the time, you don’t even know what version of your idea will work. You just need to keep walking — learning, adjusting, testing — without breaking under the weight of your own expectations.
Final Thoughts
You’ll meet people who sprint and burn out. People who chase every goal with urgency but never seem to get closer. People who build for years and wonder why no one comes.
But you’ll also meet founders who move with quiet confidence. They hold a big vision, but they’re not trying to force it tomorrow. They don’t panic. They don’t flinch. They walk — steadily — toward the tallest building in the city.
That’s who I try to be. That’s who I try to help others become.
Because when you let go of obsession, you gain focus. And that’s where real movement starts.