This is becoming undone.
And a town that still doesn't quite feel like home, we walk through the door, expecting
“to be greeted by a bright young, courteous worker and one of those paper hats that I knew”
that we wouldn't know in a restaurant full of strangers. My wife and I, we'd made this quick walk to in and out burger, just so 535, we're going to grab a Friday night burger. We've only been there twice since we moved to town, so in a way it was kind of a bit of a treat.
And when we finally got there, reached for the door, and as I did, I saw it.
Blue and gold was a familiar logos, familiar faces, it was a total surprise. We lived in Laco for almost 2 years now, but I'll be honest, it's still not home, at least it doesn't feel like home. The Lubbock? We lived in Lubbock, Texas for 15 years.
We raised our family there, those of our kids still live there, we go back at least every few weeks. Lubbock still feels like home.
“So when we saw members of the Lubbock Christian Boys basketball team and my friend”
Coach Chez Tucker, all sat down, having a meal together, I was shocked, at least for a moment. While our Sunday hadn't played basketball, Lubbock Christian, he was a two-spore athlete, and Coach Tucker had been his position coach in football. So seeing that group from his old school having dinner together, some 5 or 6 hours, southeast of Lubbock was a welcome surprise.
The Eagles boys and girls team were both in town for the taps, state basketball and championship. The Texas area of private and pro-real schools, unlike the UIL for private schools. And Lubbock Christian is a bit of an athletic powerhouse in tap circles. They've claimed let's call the Henderson Cup, back to back years, 2223, 2324, and finished
third and 2425, and it's kind of like the Leerfield Cup, it's the award for the most decorated
athletics and fine art school in the state. The Lubbock Christian fashion both teams had made it to the state basketball quarterfiles in Waco, but in unloved Christian fashion, both teams lost their first game, meaning they missed the chance to play for the 26 state championships, despite the loss the guy seemed to be in pretty good spirits, and I couldn't help but compare the way that they were together,
they were eating, they were laughing, genuinely enjoying one another's company, and I was comparing that to the end of my basketball journey. And we've all got moments that shattered us, waste most of us do, moments when that life that we've so carefully constructed the plans, the roles, the expectations, they all come crashing down around us.
The specifics of these moments might differ, but after 100 interviews with high achievers and more than two decades working with elite athletes, I can tell you that that experience hitting rock bottom is almost universal, it's the moment when you're left standing around, looking at the smoking wreckage that was your life, unsure what to do next, with no clear pass forward that can shake you to your core.
World calls these failures, but I've come to see them as something else entirely. These are the moments that define us, not by just the collapse, but by what comes next.
I remember my first real failure, my last loss, I remember a time in my life when I thought
I had it all figured out, I had what I thought was a clear path since purpose, a vision for where I wanted to go, but looking back there was a mountain of evidence at the time that I was in desperate need of a course correction, I was clearly headed for a painful reckoning with reality, but what I was far too young to realize at the time was that that collapse was coming, now I don't remember everything about those days, but those moments leading
“up to it, what I'll never forget was a look in my own eyes as I stared in the mirror,”
hollow fiery, tear-street, angry terrified, now what that shook me to my core, I remember thinking, what in that all mixed. When your identity is tied to something as fragile as being an athlete, it's only a matter of time before you reach the end of the line, and despite a childhood and early adulthood spent building my entire identity around being an athlete, it was basically over for me
at the age of 18. Way sooner than I would've chosen, but over regardless. I stared in that mirror above the sink in the visiting team locker room, just boiling up with a mix of rage and hatred for the states that looked back at me. I wasn't an athlete, I was a femur athlete, and unlike Lebe Christian, my team didn't
make a deep run in the state tournament, and beyond us, nobody expected us to. My team had been eliminated in the second round of the Illinois State High School Association Basketball Regions, and one of the few things that I hate about the game of basketball is that all but just a select few players have to end their careers with a playoff loss. And though I had dreams of playing college basketball, exactly zero schools had expressed
Interest in having me on their team.
All the people around me had made it pretty clear.
“All this silly basketball stuff seemed to be over, and it would be time to get almost”
life. So when it was, I reluctantly faced my new truth, it was over. After that final buzzer sounded, I found myself in somebody else's locker room, leaning against somebody else's locker. I waited for my coach and my teammates to get out of the locker room one by one, but
I landed a stayed behind. A serious heck wasn't going to show weakness and break down in front of them. But I wasn't ready to go eat that, like ever. I knew that while I had walked in that door as an athlete, I wouldn't walk out of it as one.
As soon as I was alone, that rage quickly collapsed, you know, unrestrained grief.
I stomped into a pile of worthlessness onto somebody else's cold, polished concrete and pulled my knees tightly to my chest, like a patient in a psych work, pressing the back of my head against that locker behind me. That door latch was clinking it, but it couldn't cover the sound of my breath as I left harder and harder.
Trying to choke the sound is I did early mourned that last loss. Now I get it, in retrospect, that reaction didn't fit the gravity of the situation. It was total overkill. I wanted it that game pretty much knowing that it would be it, and we got destroyed as expected.
An outsider might be left to wonder why I was so upset to lose a game that my team and I were supposed to lose anyway, and I hadn't just lost a game, I'd lost my way.
Basketball had become at least to me, and that season the most important part was who
I was.
“I honestly couldn't tell you how long I sat there before I finally got up.”
I only slipped off my jersey for the last time. Stuffed my sweating uniform and my thinking shoes and my team bag for the last time. Shower, not for the last time, and I put on my street clothes. I tried to pull myself together, and it long lasted some in the strength to leave as the new unwanted me, as a former athlete.
Few doors in my life had been harder to walk through than that one. I wasn't anxious to go through it, because even though I really had no idea what was on the other side. A new basketball wasn't. So when I saw that team, many of them who had just lost their last game of their basketball
careers. Lasting it up and having a good time. I felt a tinge of jealousy. But when Coach Tucker came over to chat and he shared their plans, that jealousy turned into deep, add my rage.
I heard the news, I was sorry to hear it, but I was finishing in the final four, it's nothing to sneeze at, I told him. It was already about 6 p.m. and it's 350 miles to love it. So I was a little surprised they were taking their time. I asked him y'all heading back tonight.
Last when he said something that I haven't been able to shake since. No, he said they wanted to say another night, hang out, enjoy each other's company. We'll head back tomorrow, but tonight for one more night we're going to stay together as a team. Ever since then, I've been in awe of those high schoolers.
“They were mature enough to realize that before they know it, life is going to be changing.”
But those seniors are going somewhere new, maybe some underclassmen either won't play or transfer schools, that team that they had, that has lived would soon be no more. They had one more night, and they were going to enjoy it. It reminds me of this one. Well, our friends will move away, they'll go in the bad, the thing says, but our friends will be gone away.
So, we'll see you in the next video. Or the absolutely insane wisdom in this quote. By renowned philosopher Andy Bernard. The weird thing is, now I'm exactly where I want to be, I got my dream job at Cornell, and I'm still just thinking about my old pals.
Only now they're the ones I made here. I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days before you've actually left them.
We back after a quick break.
Hi, I'm Sarah Beth Herman, a five-time CEO and host of the podcast No Silver Spoons.
“This show is for leaders, entrepreneurs, and people building something meaningful without shortcuts.”
We talk about leadership, mindset, business growth, and the real lessons that come from doing hard things really well. And if you're in the dental industry, you'll hear a few episodes that speak directly to that world too, because no matter your field, leadership is leadership. Listen to No Silver Spoons wherever you get your podcast.
For 18-year-old me in that locker room, I was too broken in that moment to have the proper perspective. But the me since then, it's kind of been the opposite problem, destination addiction. Being that happiness is just one degree or one promotion or one new job or one new city or one new relationship line.
It can be tempting to want to climb that ladder and constantly get ahead, but that chase can make us miss out on all the best things those good old days we're in right now have to offer.
“And that's what we're going to talk about today in episode 151 of Becoming Undone.”
I guess now this is a good time as in to say that I'm Dr. Toby Brooks, a professor, author, speaker, and performance scientist. I've spent much of the past 20 years working on higher achievers, learning about what makes him different. And seeing firsthand how failures and setbacks that would destroy him, oh, who's actually
set them up for the biggest successes. And each week I'll be coming undone, I bring you a new guest, where we talk about how that unraveling can be a prerequisite to the best buildups in the most massive successes. But so often onward of the third, I bring you a solo episode where I reflect, reprocess and recommit to taking what we've learned from them and getting better ourselves.
And today we're talking about destination addiction.
Now if you've never heard of destination addiction, don't worry, it's not in the DSM.
You won't find it on any prescription model, but you'll find it in boardrooms, and you'll find it in locker rooms, and you'll find it in high achievers who can't sit still, long enough, to enjoy the very thing they worked so hard to build. Destination addiction is the belief that happiness lives just ahead. It's that subtle, but persistent lie that says, I'll be good when, dot, dot, dot.
I'll relax after, dot, dot, dot, dot. I'll finally be happy, yes. One more degree, one more promotion, one more contract, one more title, one more win. And listen, ambition isn't the enemy, and neither are growth or high performance.
But when our peace is always postponed, trust me, that's a problem, because what destination addiction does, especially high achievers, is that it convinces us that fulfillment lives somewhere on the other side of a rival.
But here's what I'd both seen and learned the hard way, a rival never arrives.
We'll be back after this, quick message. If you ever looked in the mirror and thought, what in the hell just happened to my life, and the career shifts, when the relationship ends, when the identity you've built, your whole life around disappears overnight.
“That's not failure, that's what I call a purpose door, and most high achievers aren't”
prepared for it, because no one ever taught us how to train for a comeback. Dr. Toby Brooks and I built the science of the comeback for people who refused to stay broken. Inside the app you'll find a research back resilience training, daily prompts and guided reflection tools, performance psychology frameworks, identity rebuilding exercises, and personalized structure pathways to move from burnout and confusion to clarity and momentum.
It's not hype, it's neuroscience, it's performance science, and it's hard going experience. If you're listening to becoming undone, I created a special offer just for you. For the next three months, you can get full access for just 49 bucks for an entire year. We're just five bucks a month, but no obligation, you can cancel at any time. That's less than the price would cup coffee to start rebuilding your life on purpose.
Your comeback isn't accidental, it's intentional. Start yours today at scienceofthecomeback.com.
But here's what I've both seen and learned the hard way, a rival never arrives.
You hit the goal, you get the job, you finish the season, you walk across the stage, and sometimes you're before the applause even fades, your brain is already whispering. What's next? And if your first instinct after a win is to immediately chase the next thing, instead of honoring the one you're just accomplished, you might be addicted to destinations.
I know that because I've lived it.
That locker room when I was 18, I wasn't grieving the loss of the game. I was grieving the loss of a future that I dealt with in my head. I wasn't thinking, "Man, what a ride." I was thinking, "I rushed through that last night." But those love a Christian kids?
They didn't. They understood something that 18-year-old need didn't. That sometimes the most mature move isn't to move on. It's to stay one more night. Destination addiction shows up in a few predictable ways.
So let me give you some diagnostics in case you're wondering if it's getting you. First, you constantly delay joy. You tell yourself you're going to celebrate later after the deadline or after the season, or after the semester, or after the kids are old, after that bank account's bigger. But that never arrives.
And if joy is always scheduled for a future version of our lives,
then we missed the one we lived here. When she was little, my daughter bring desperately wanted a pair of rollerblades. When she finally got them, she loved her.
“And I remember her holding and playing with the buckles and spinning the wheels,”
but she didn't want to actually rollerblade in them because she was afraid and she'd scuff them up. And she loved them perfect just like they were. So sometimes later, when she finally decided it was time to give them a go, she discovered that her feet had grown.
She couldn't wear them. It wouldn't fit. She'd been so concerned about the damage they might take if she'd worn them, but she'd missed out on her opportunity to wear them at all. And so it is with life. We can be so seduced by the need of hustle and grind to get to where we think we deserve to be,
that we fail to truly enjoy the present. But somehow ready to slip that roll on that we've been putting off, might just be too late.
Second, you feel strangely empty after big wins.
And this one hits me hard. You accomplish that thing that hasn't been chasing for years, but instead of feeling satisfied, you feel neutral, or worse, restless, so you move the gold post. Again, for me, I thought that was just how driving ambition worked. But it's more than that. It's like a hamster wheel.
We can run as hard as we want to, but we still might not actually be getting anywhere. When I finally got tenure, I was happy for no lie about 15 seconds. This accomplishment that I've been chasing for more than a decade had gone from dream to reality. But before I could even allow the smile to form on my face,
“I remember the first thought that formed in my mind.”
Now what? It's unsettling how that massive goal, that destination being our mind forever, finally moved to the done list, getting tenure was scratched off my to-do list. But I actually grew deeply depressed. I didn't know what I needed to do, or what direction I needed to point my new efforts into.
After a while, I finally figured it out. But I felt the shame and loneliness that was unlike anything I'd ever felt before. All because my massive goal had actually been successfully completed. Third, you struggle to be present in ordinary moments. Dinner, car rides, practices, meetings, random Tuesday nights,
physically you're there. But mentally you're already moving to the next milestone. And here's the truth that we hate to admit. Most of the good old days don't feel like the good old days when we're in there. And if you're constantly chasing the next thing, you won't recognize the beauty of the thing you're
standing in. A few weeks ago on the show, I told you about the artwork, my son drew for me, when he was just a couple years old. I can actually see it on the wall by the camera. It's a stick figure with his hands held out, as if to say stop. And the letters in OWROG, who is my little guy's attempt to tell his dad no working.
It's feigned and it's hanging to remind me to stay centered. But you know, it's too late now. I don't need to stay centered to forsake my people for my to-do list. But in that moment, it was like an indictment on my soul that told me I'd been so focused on trying to make a living for my family that I wasn't able to do life like that.
Destination addiction tells us one more month of this, so one more season, just a little longer. Today my son Taisin Lubbock and I'm in Waco. He didn't have to tell me no working today, because honestly, it doesn't matter. Sadly, he no longer needs me, like he used to.
“I say sadly, in a way that's good, that's what we want.”
If I could do it over, I'd be more present. So when I ask you to ask yourself, what's happening right now? If we can't be present right now, we might not have a present to return to later. Lastly, one more side, you're probably dealing with Destination addiction, is that your identity is tied to motion.
Slow and down feels like losing, when resting feels like weakness, when contentment feels like complacency. That's when I know that this thing's got its hooks in me. Because if we only feel valuable when we're advancing,
we'll never feel valuable when we're still.
And that's dangerous. Here's why Destination addiction is so subtle.
It wears the mask of excellence.
Nobody criticizes the guys who's always striving.
Nobody questions the woman who keeps climbing. But if you can't be at peace in the process, you won't suddenly be at peace when you take the podium. The Destination doesn't fix what the wiring created. So what do we do about it?
Let me give you a few practical things that you can start this week. First, build what I call arrival rituals. High achievers are phenomenal at setting goals, and I'll include myself in that bunch. We are terrible at closing chapters. So before asking what's next, ask what did this mean?
Celebrate with Intentionality, react with deliberation. On the effort, don't sprint past the milestones like their inconveniences. Plan ahead how you're going to celebrate the arrival. And then stick to it.
You earned it. Consider celebration part of the process.
“Put it on your to-do list if you have to.”
But don't skip it no matter what. Second, practice what I call last night awareness. Those young men chose one more night together. What if you treated one moment this week, like it was the last time, the last practice, the last dinner,
the last road trip, the last friend in Tuesday night. Not in a sick and morbid way, but in an aware way. It changes how you show up to this day. So it is day! My kids make fun of me for being overly sentimental.
And I'll actually give myself some credit for this.
I'm always on the lookout for the last.
I want to shave it and drink them in. You can't, too. Unlike me, avoid the temptation to be sad that they're ending. But allow yourself to be filled gratitude to this they happen in the first place. Thirdly, in this one, I'm terrible at.
So, full of admission. Separate your identity from your outcomes. You're more than just a title or the jersey. You're not just the promotion. And the person who shows up with integrity, effort, and courage,
regardless of the outcome, that's when matters. When identity is internal, instead of external, then those destinations lose their power. We don't need to be constantly looking for that promotion of that pay raise of that title, because we already know who we are.
What we're capable of. We just have to remember it. Last but not least, anchor yourself in the process. Control your controllables. Pick one thing that defines you independent of the results.
Maybe you're going to prepare better than anybody else. Maybe you're going to show it consistently more than anybody else. Maybe you're going to be kinder, or more faceless, or more disciplined. Something that is uniquely yours, whether you win or lose. That can study that emotional roller coaster.
Because here's what I learned.
Even decades removed from that cold locker room floor. Life is full of doors. Some of them we sprint through and we're pulled. Some of them we trudged through and we're pushing. But every now and then, you get the chance to stand in the doorway and decide how you're
going to walk through it. Those boys at the in and out, they chose to stay in the doorway with one more night. 18 year-old named Diddy. Maybe that's maturity. It's not that we stop striving, but that we stop rushing.
Maybe the goal isn't to reach the next thing faster. I think I got that wrong. Maybe the goal is to not miss the thing you're standing in. Because one day sooner than we all think we're going to look back on this season. Whatever it is, this job, this team, this version of your family, and we're going to realize
these were the good old days. So don't wait until they're gone to recognize them. That's destination addiction. And that my friend is how we start to break it.
“Because one day, this version of your life is going to be gone.”
The team you're surrounded by, the role that you're serving in, the season that you find yourself in. The question is whether you were present for it. Destination addiction convinces us to chase the next thing. Because science of the comeback teaches us something different. The zillions isn't just about rising after we fall.
It's about not out running our own life in the first place. So friend, if you're navigating a transition, leading high performers or rebuilding, identity after loss, I'd love to walk with you. Visit scienceofthecomeback.com, check out my new app. There's five bucks a month.
It can help you navigate your own transitions. Or maybe check out my website until we're rooksphd.com. After coaching consulting, speaking, I'd love to bring this message to your organization. So together, let's build something that lasts. I'm just something that looks good on paper.
As always, if I can help you, let me know and I'll do my best to assist. I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. We sure to check it out on the web, simply go to undempodcast.com. If you'd one, five, one, check out the notes, links and images related to this week's show. So quick updates, we had another good week in the rankings holding pretty steady.
“I think we're sitting at number six in the world in education and self improvement.”
And we're inching back up to number 133 apples top 200.
If you want to follow along and see your progress for yourself,
you can now go to undempodcast.com/rankings.
“Cheers on. If you'd be so kind as to share the show with a friend,”
leave a comment or a review. That would be so very helpful and so deeply appreciated.
Coming up, I'm working on some exciting new episodes.
“Got to follow up coming with my friend, Roger Wipe, who is just here in town and we go last week.”
His life has undergone some tragic changes since our last chat on the show, but he isn't done yet. I'm also working to finalize the conversation with former string-conditioned codes
“turn past your Chris McCormick, so stay tuned for that. This and more coming up on Becoming Undone.”
Becoming Undone is an nitride creative production written in produced by me, Toby Brooks. Tell a friend about the show, follow along on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn, I've been coming undone pod. Follow me at Toby Brooks PhD, on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.
Check out my link tree at linkTR.e/tobybrookspd. As always, listen, subscribe, leave me a review on
Apple Podcast Spotify. I hear a radio or wherever you get in podcasts. Till next time, it's okay to stay one more night, but whatever you do, keep getting better. I'll see you next time. [BLANK_AUDIO]
