A winning streak is an extended, uninterrupted sequence of victories. It happens when you stack high-quality actions for long enough that momentum takes over—turning steady progress into exponential growth.

For most people, a winning streak = 3 days in a row where they didn’t binge an entire season of ‘Stranger Things’ laying on the sofa with a vape in one hand and the other covered in cheeto dust.

Once you enter the ‘realm of self improvement’, winning streaks = consistent workout schedules and deep work, maybe a little meditation and Tony Robbins sprinkled in for fun.

But when your goal in life is to become genuinely exceptional, winning streaks take on an entirely new meaning.

You’ve got the foundation; you’re healthy, working on something you care about, dedicated to your goals—what you want now is RESULTS. And not just any results, MEGA-results. The kind of lightspeed growth you only read about on random Twitter posts and see in the movies. You’re looking for QUANTUM LEAPS. The kind of transformation that changes your perception of what’s possible.

These are quantum leaps. Yes, they’re extreme. But talent alone doesn’t create quantum leaps—plenty of gifted people never make it.

Musk wasn’t the only smart guy in Silicon Valley. Jordan wasn’t the only talented player in North Carolina. Arnold wasn’t the only genetic freak in bodybuilding. The real difference? They stacked wins relentlessly, never broke momentum, and forced reality to bend to their will.

And that’s what matters.

Whatever level you’re at, you already know what your quantum leap looks like—that level of progress that excites you and terrifies you at the same time.

You know it’s possible.

So ask yourself: What’s actually stopping you?

It’s not talent. It’s not intelligence. It’s not genetics.

It’s this: Winning streaks don’t happen by accident. They only happen after months of doing everything right—without slipping, without stalling, without accidentally murd*ring your momentum.

This is rare. Humans are wired to survive, not thrive. Extreme success goes against our nature and there are very specific ‘mental routines’ that play out in EVERY high performer, consistently cutting their winning streaks short and forcing them to play out a ‘Boom & Bust’ cycle of growth & regression that looks like this:

Some people might look as this and think “YAYYY, LOOK, I’M CONSISTENTLY GETTING HIGHER EACH TIME!!” Others might look at it and think “Holy sh*t i never realised that was happening but that’s exactly it!”. Winners look at it and think “how do I completely EVISCERATE that trough so I can ascend upwards at a 10x faster rate?!”

The truth: You can never completely evicerate dips & regressions, and there’s no such thing as a winning streak that lasts forever. Why? Because winning streaks get cut short for 2 reasons:

External changes are out of your control. Wildfires, economic crashes, sudden illness—you can’t predict them, and there’s not a f*cking thing you can do about them. Maybe someone passes away, maybe you get ill, maybe your partner decides they can’t deal with your sickening work ethic and leaves you. Shit happens. And when it does, it inevitably gets in the way of the mission.

But most winning streaks don’t get cut short because of something external. They get cut short because of something INTERNAL.

In other words, YOU changed. Your thoughts, your behaviours, your habits—something “slipped” and set off a chain reaction that reversed your momentum. What we can (and MUST) do, is remove all these internal changes that decapitate our winning streaks before they reach the ‘hyper compound growth’ phase a.k.a. The Land of Quantum Leaps.

Step 1 to fixing this = recognise it’s playing out.

Here’s how the typical ‘Boom & Bust’ cycle goes:

At the height of this cycle, you reached a “new peak” of success. But now you’re back close to where you started, wondering “how the F*** did this happen??” This cycle is common among high performers who don’t understand the ‘psychological traps’ created by success.

The good news: BREAK the cycle, and you unlock a new realm of possibility. When you stop cutting your winning streaks short, you open the door to exponential growth—the product of compounding momentum. There’s nothing “woo-woo” about it. Longer winning streaks = more uninterrupted compounding = extreme results.

Most people never escape this cycle. They stay stuck in the endless loop—rising, falling, wondering why they can never break through.

They convince themselves it’s just how life works. But it’s not. It’s a trap.

And once you see the trap, you can break free from it forever.

That’s step 2:

In some ways, every human being is unique & irreplicable. In other ways, we’re all exactly the same. When it comes to our baseline mental wiring, we’re like these guys:

A.k.a. CLONES. Our lizard brains are identical, which is why we all cut our winning streaks short in exactly the same ways for exactly the same reasons. From studying myself, and endless research on “the greats” + psychology, I’ve found THREE core psychological traps created by success:

Contrary to what many social media gurus would have people believe, winning isn’t the product of “hard work and consistency”. Winning is the product of hard work + consistency + 1000 tiny little “micro habits” you developed as you built momentum. Examples of micro habits that create exceptional outcomes:

There are so many things like this that make the difference between good and exceptional. If you knew about them all before you started, you’d probably never start.

But most of them only reveal themselves once you’re fully committed, at which point it’s too late to turn around. You either accept them & find a way to do it all, or you accept mediocre results.

When your success starts reversing after a winning streak, it’s not because you stopped working or showing up consistently, it’s because you stopped doing all the little extra things that created your success.

They don’t call it “the death by a couple big swings of the long sword”, they call it “the death by A THOUSAND CUTS”. If you put a frog in boiling water, it jumps out and survives. If you put a frog in cold water, and gradually heat it up to boiling point, the frog dies.

Why? Because the danger is TOO SUBTLE TO NOTICE, until it’s TOO GREAT TO AVOID.

That’s “complacency”. From a birds eye view, it still LOOKS like you’re doing the same things—working hard & staying consistent. But if you zoom in, you notice that all the tiny things that made you successful start to diappear.

Why does this happen?

You don’t win today because of today’s work—you win because of the last 3–6 months of effort. Every outcome, good or bad, is just the delayed effect of past actions. Any change you make today—positive or negative—won’t show up for 1–3 months.

This is why the death by 1000 cuts is “too subtle to notice”. Each concession is so small that it slips under the radar, and the damage doesn’t show up immediately. The result? you get positively reinforced for your mental laziness. Think about it:

This process repeats until you’ve abandoned many/all of the tiny habits that created your success, and you don’t feel the effect of it until your OUTCOMES catch up to your ACTIONS, at which point you’ve lost all momentum and have to rebuild again.

Overconfidence bias = natural human tendency to develop a false sense of “invincibility” after you start winning. You start thinking that your success is a product of WHO YOU ARE, rather than WHAT YOU DO.

High performers are especially prone to this because we all desperately want to believe we’re special & talented. Again, it’s a failure to recognise what actually creates exceptional outcomes.

THE TRUTH: You exist on a spectrum—from your least effective self to your most effective self.

When you start winning, it’s not because you’re inherently a winner—it’s the compounding result of consistently operating at your peak. But if you fall for this delusion and start attributing success to who you are rather than the hyper-effective mode you’ve been in, you invite complacency. You ease up, drop your standards, and before you realize it, you’re coasting—setting yourself up for a slow, unnoticed decline.

When you start taking extreme action and get on a winning streak, it’s like driving a supercar—insanely fast, but fuel-hungry. If you rely on the wrong fuel or don’t manage it properly, you won’t just slow down—you’ll either burn out or coast into complacency.

There are three main unsustainable fuel sources:

They all burn hot—but can run out long before you reach the finish line.

You know we talked about the complacency cycle where results start falling off a cliff and a painful moment spurs you to action? That action is driven by “negative fuel” i.e. the burning desire to get AWAY from a painful situation.

This is fine.

There’s nothing wrong with being driven by negativity. But if it’s your ONLY fuel source, you’re f*cked. Why? Because there’s a massive gap between the amount of success required to eliminate pain and the amount of success you actually want.

Let’s say your goal is to become a multi-millionaire. I can tell you from personal experience that basically ALL financial pain goes away around $10k/mo. And yes, you still have the pain of “not being a millionaire”, but it doesn’t come close to the pain of genuinely worrying about your survival. So, if “getting away from financial pain” is your ONLY source of fuel, you’re going to come sputtering to a halt like a car that’s run out of gas.

Willpower = the ability to force yourself to do things you don’t want to do.

In the beginning of any hard pursuit, it’s ALL willpower. You have to brute force your way through discomfort, resistance, and distractions. And that’s fine—for a while. But willpower is finite. It’s like lifting to max every single day. You can do it for a bit—but eventually, your muscles give out.

That’s what happens when you rely on willpower alone. You grind through exhaustion, pushing harder and harder, disregarding recovery—until eventually you burn out completely.

And when burnout hits, you don’t just slow down—you hit a wall. Hard. And there’s no choice but to stop.

At the beginning of your journey, there are thousands—maybe millions—of people ahead of you. Everywhere you look, you see proof of what you don’t have—money, status, freedom. The gap between you and them is unbearable, and that gap becomes fuel.

But then you start winning. The gap shrinks. And instead of chasing, you start passing people. And the more people you surpass, the fewer people you have “above” you to compare yourself to.

Yes, there will ALWAYS be people above you. But who you compare yourself to isn’t dictated by who exists in the world—it’s dictated by who exists in YOUR world.

Unless you were born surrounded by extreme success, your world won’t give you many reference points beyond ‘above average.’

If you keep comparing yourself to the majority as you climb, your comparison fuel weakens. Eventually, it runs out completely. If you don’t switch to a different fuel source or shift your reference group, complacency isn’t a risk—it’s a guarantee.

Summary:

Either way: You slow down. Always getting a taste of success, but never the full feast.

Chung Ju-yung—the founder of Hyundai—once said “after luxury comes corruption”. My interpretation of that is, “once you shift your focus from the internal scorecard to the external scorecard, you’re f*cked!”

Your internal scorecard is what you think of you—your character, effort, and the extent to which you live up to your own standards. Your external scorecard is what everyone else thinks of you—your status, wealth, and recognition. One is rooted in truth. The other is rooted in perception. And here’s the trap:

Focusing on the internal scorecard breeds success—discipline, effort, and high standards naturally produce winning outcomes. But success brings validation—status, money, recognition. Over time, your attention shifts. You start optimizing for the external scorecard instead, caring more about appearing successful than actually being successful. The more weight you give to their appraisal, the less you focus on your own.

That’s the “corruption” Chung Ju-yung warned about. The tipping point is usually when the world’s opinion of you surpasses your own. You get hooked on their praise, forgetting their scorecard is fake—based on the 1% they see. The internal scorecard is real. The external is a delusion. Fall for it, and you’ll take your eyes off the prize, forsake the work, and cut your winning streak short.

We’ve talked about the importance of keeping your winning streaks alive. We’ve exposed the ‘psychological traps’ of success—how they breed complacency and cut your streaks short.

Now let’s talk about the 7 most effective ways to DEFEND yourself against complacency, allowing you to recognise it, “smite it down” instantly, and continue ascending to the upper echelons of humanity.

Self-awareness = the ability to observe yourself objectively and recognize your habitual patterns of thought and behavior.

When you’re HYPER self-aware, you catch even the smallest changes in your thinking and habits. And because you’re so aware, you can see exactly how one is influencing the other.

This ALONE will have a profound impact on your success.

Why? Because complacency doesn’t start with action—it starts with a shift in your thinking. Once your thinking shifts, your behavior follows.

The ‘psychological traps’ are what shift your thinking in the first place. And here’s the thing:

These thoughts only have power when they slip ‘under the radar’. The second you become consciously AWARE of them, they lose their grip.

Why? Because not all your thoughts are true. But you only realise that once you’re able to look at them OBJECTIVELY, which requires conscious awareness.

So how do you see your own thoughts objectively? How do you separate truth from illusion? And most importantly—how do you K*LL complacent thoughts before they take root and destroy your winning streak?

I know, I know—meditation is some hippy guru bullsh*t that we should leave to the white guys in Bali with dreadlocks who smell terrible. I used to think this. I was wrong.

Meditation changed my life forever—not because I reached “enlightenment” or anything close, but because it helped me see my thoughts for the first time.

For years, I was blindly acting on thoughts without realizing they were patterns. But once I started meditating, I could see the same destructive thoughts arise over and over again—right before I engaged in some self-sabotaging behavior.

It was like: "HOLY SH*T—that’s why I’ve been doing X."

And then another amazing thing happened: as soon as I became AWARE of the thoughts that were triggering my sabotaging behaviours, I realised I could simply CHOOSE not to do it.

Essentially, I’d gained control over my unconscious impulses.

That alone changed everything.

I would reach a sticky point in my writing, and my brain would go: "This is tough… I wonder if X posted anything new on Instagram?"

In the past, I would’ve impulsively pulled out my phone, gone down a 35-minute “side quest,” and completely destroyed my flow. But now, I could SEE the thought, which meant I could look at it objectively, say “HA, nice try!” and continue with my work.

It felt like I’d discovered a cheat code to life.

I became the master of my own mind. I wasn’t a slave, I had control.

That’s what meditation will do for you.

Don’t see it as a path to enlightenment—see it as a TOOL for developing impulse control.

The process is simple: Sit down. Breathe deeply through your nose. Focus intently on your breath. After a few seconds, an automatic thought will pop up.

Your only job is to catch it as quickly as possible and re-focus on your breath. Repeat this process over and over. That’s it.

(Pro Tip: The more you relax your body, the easier it gets.)

Create a document. Title it “2025.” Write today’s date.

Done? Great. Now make your first entry.

Talk about what you’re working on, what you’re thinking about, what you’re struggling with, what problems you’re trying to solve.

Again, this isn’t some “dear diary, here are my feelings” bullsh*t.

This is about externalising your thoughts—which allows you to see them objectively—while also keeping a consistent log of what’s running through your mind at any given time.

Why does this matter?

Because when you have a record of your thoughts, you can track patterns. You can look back and see exactly what led to success—and exactly what led to failure.

When you’re winning, you can see what thinking & actions created that outcome.

When you’re slipping, you can see what changed vs. when you were at your peak.

It’s another cheat code for developing hyper self-awareness—the level of awareness required to win at the highest level.

I’ve been doing this since 2021, and my yearly logs have been INVALUABLE in spotting the exact behaviours that destroy my winning streaks.

I can pull up my journal and see EXACTLY what I was thinking on February 24, 2023.

I can look at major wins and see what I was doing & thinking in the 3 months leading up to them.

I can look at losing streaks and pinpoint what triggered the downfall.

This is my secret weapon.

I used to drift through life, repeating the same mistakes over and over again. I didn’t even realize I was doing it.

Now I don’t have that problem.

I record everything. I look for patterns. I fix bad ones & double down on good ones.

You need to be tracking EVERYTHING you want to improve.

Every. Single. Day.

If you’re trying to lose weight, step on the scale and log your weight every morning.

If you’re trying to make more money, log the number in your bank account daily.

Whatever your major ambition is, figure out the most important metric(s) for success, track them daily, and log the change from the day before.

Why? Because humans are MASTERS of self-deception.

Without hard data, you will lie to yourself. You will convince yourself you’re doing better than you really are.

If you feel resistance to doing this, ask yourself why.

Do you not want the TRUTH? Do you not want to know EXACTLY where you stand every single day? A lot of people don’t.

They’d rather bury their heads in the sand and live in the delusion of progress than face objective reality and do what’s actually required to win.

I know—because I used to be that guy.

For years, I was stuck in a daydream of success, wondering why it wasn’t happening. Then one day, the pain of not getting what I wanted became unbearable, so I started tracking everything.

Now, the first thing I do every morning is log my KPIs in a spreadsheet titled “I LOVE DATA.”

Armed with this data, I can instantly see when growth is slowing down, speeding up, or reversing. And this awareness automatically drives action.

Complacency hates it when you track your numbers daily. (it knows it can’t survive for long)

Reading biographies is one of the highest ROI ways to spend your time outside of working.

Think about it: the most successful people who ever lived have shared their entire lifetime worth of lessons & insights in books you can buy for $20 and read in a week, and you’re choosing NOT to read them? Do you hate success??

All jokes aside, one of the biggest benefits of reading biographies is that it keeps you humble, and humility is the greatest defence against the overconfidence trap.

They put your achievements in perspective, and slap you with a humbling reality:

You’ve barely scratched the surface of your potential.

On top of reading biographies, i’d recommend to always be learning. The moment you STOP learning, you send a dangerous signal to your brain—“I’ve got this figured out”. This is a recipe for overconfidence, complacency, and “falling off”.

Learning demands you humble yourself. Before you can learn anything, you’re forced to admit there are things you still don’t know—a hyper-effective defence mechanism against complacency.

In the 2009 NBA Finals, Kobe Bryant and the Los Angeles Lakers were up 2-0 against the Orlando Magic. After securing the second win, Kobe sat down for the post-game press conference, stone-faced, locked in. A reporter, expecting him to be excited about the lead, asked:

"Why aren’t you smiling? You’re up 2-0."

Kobe barely hesitated before delivering his response:

"What’s there to be happy about? Job’s not finished. Job finished? I don’t think so."

Kobe knew something all elite performers know: you have to keep your eyes on the prize. That doesn’t mean you should ignore your success. If you disregard every win you have on the way to the “big win”, you’ll lose confidence and run out of steam.

But here’s the thing: winning occurs at times of peak momentum a.k.a. Exactly when you need to be putting your foot on the gas and going even harder.

If you celebrate the small wins like they’re the end goal, you send a signal to your brain of “we made it”, indicating that it’s okay to take your foot off the gas and slow down.

This is exactly why most winning streaks collapse: people slow down at the precise moment they should be going doubling down.

Kobe knew this, and he refused to let complacency steal his ring.

Remember we talked about the 3 unsustainable fuel sources:

Mastering each one requires a different approach. Here’s how:

REAL negative fuel is driven by the internal survival mechanism. Once you start winning, it will run out. Some people find ways to keep putting their survival on the line—like inflating their lifestyle—but i’d argue this is a horrible strategy. Firstly, you’re risking everything. Secondly, if you need to risk everything just to get yourself to take action, how much does the goal really mean to you?

Instead, switch to “positive fuel”—a vision so compelling it pulls you forward. Key = make it something tangible and deeply meaningful. For Arnold Schwarzenegger, this was standing on the Mr. Universe podium, holding the trophy, with the crowd chanting “Arnold, Arnold, Arnold!” He kept that ONE image in his mind for years, until it became true.

What’s your Mr. Universe podium? What’s the image that’ll drive you through the pain & suffering? Only you know.

Willpower fuel is powerful, but it depletes fast. If you overextend yourself—grinding through exhaustion, pushing harder and harder, disregarding recovery—eventually you’ll burn out completely. Here’s how it goes:

To guard against this, you need a “release valve” a.k.a. An off switch. This could be the gym, playing sport, time with family, reading fiction, long walks—anything that takes your mind fully off the mission.

This not only helps manage stress, it also improves your work performance. Research has found that people who are never fully “off” can never be fully “on”. Your mental recovery rituals are an essential component of sustained elite performance.

Comparing down might make you feel good, but it robs you of fuel & invites complacency. So the first step = stop comparing yourself to people behind you.

The next step is finding a new point of reference.

My favourite? ‘You plus one’.

Some people say you should create an image of your ULTIMATE self—the “final boss” version of you who’s got everything figured out. I disagree. First, you have know idea what that version will look like. Second, it’s too big of a leap.

You plus one = the version of you who’s ONE STEP AHEAD at all times. If you wake up at 6am, they wake up at 5:30am. If you do 10 sets in the gym, they do 12. If you get 3 hours of deep work done, they do 4.

This is the person you’d never want to go against. Everything you do, they do it better. Imagine it. Imagine they worked, trained, ate, and lived with you. Imagine how INFURIATING it would be to have this person constantly out-perform you at every turn.

Write it down. Describe them in vivid detail. What they do, how they think, their habits, etc. And remember, they should only be ONE step ahead.

Then your only goal in life is to beat them. Whenever you do, celebrate. You earned it.

But remember, the moment you match them, they step it up a notch. They are ALWAYS one step ahead—giving you a permanent opponent to fight against as you battle to victory.

That’s the ultimate form of “comparison fuel”. Additionally, you should find ways to upgrade your peer group in real life, join online networks, and read biographies. Surround yourself with success. Force yourself to level up.

Remember the quote from the founder of Hyundai?

“After luxury comes corruption.”

Well here’s another quote:

“It will be easy to forget your vision and purpose once you have fine clothes, fast horses, and beautiful women. In that case, you will be no better than a slave, and you will surely lose everything."

You know who said that? Ghengis f*cking Khan.

He was warning his sons against “a colourful life”. Why? Because a colourful life switches your focus from the internal scorecard to the external scorecard. And when you lose focus on the internal scorecard—forsaking the work—you lose.

“Does this mean i can’t have nice things??”No, you can still have nice things. But before you buy or do ANYTHING, ask yourself: Am i doing this because i want to? Or am i doing it for what others will think of me??”

If it’s the latter, you’re falling into the trap Chung Ju-yung, Ghengis Khan, and many others have warned about.

After luxury comes corruption. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

There’s a single, fundamental difference between people who win big in life, and people who win a little, almost-win, or don’t win at all:

Doing everything they KNOW they should be.

Elite performance is literally a game of closing the gap between where you are now & the most effective version of yourself you can imagine. Education is key, because it expands your vision of what your ‘most effective version’ looks like. But ALL the gains come from actually closing the gap.

This is the core problem i have with the vast majority of hustle/motivation accounts on social media—they talk about “action” and “hard work” like it’s all the same thing.

Action and hard work are SPECTRUMS. It’s not about “are you taking action or not?”. It’s about “to what extent are you closing the gap between the things you know you SHOULD be doing and the things you actually do on a daily basis?”

My point: If you made it this far, I can safely assume that SOMETHING you just read sparked an idea for action you could be taking, but aren’t. Now the ONLY thing that matters is the extent to which you put it into practice. I know it’s not easy. It’s not supposed to be easy. There’s a reason why such a tiny fraction of people ever win at a high level. The good news is it’s also not complicated. You just put everything you know into practice.

Be the person who does the thing. Be the person who closes the gap. Be the person who wins.

P.s. If you like this style of essay, drop a comment below and let me know 🫡