Jan 23, 2026 · 38 min · 9 segments
There is a point where effort stops working and the identity holding everything together begins to break. Will Polston reached that point on a night when he lost everything and walked to a river to…
Will PolstonGuestRoman L. BinderHostIt happens when we hit rock bottom, then there's this emotional imprint in our mind that... you can get to the point where it's just, you can, you remind every detail of the situation and how you felt and that something just clicks.
And there's just, I don't know if it's, it is a defense reaction of letting go.
There's literally just one moment letting go of all, because when we're in these difficult moments, when we share a, when we have a, like intense hardship over a prolonged period of time, right? Burned out, whatever you experience.
And then it gets to the point where you just, I don't know, I've had this with different guests that there's this moment and it clicks and then something different starts.
There's a different path opened for you, right? So I guess the question I want to ask you is, do you think, as a performance coach and business coach, do you think that for peak performance, it's necessary to go through such moments to actually hit rock bottom? Or if not, does it help?
I used to... say for years, the no is the short answer, right? So the short answer is no, I don't think it's necessary.
What I do believe is that people, generally speaking, Roman, we have three drivers, okay? So we have a driver to move away from pain.
So we're desperate to get away from pain or we're desperate to get towards pleasure.
So if you kind of think of like an upside down T, you've got pain on one side, pleasure on the other.
So in Every single person on the planet is going to have moments in their life at some point where things haven't gone as they would have expected.
It happens when we hit rock bottom, then there's this emotional imprint in our mind that... you can get to the point where it's just, you can, you remind every detail of the situation and how you felt and that something just clicks.
And there's just, I don't know if it's, it is a defense reaction of letting go.
There's literally just one moment letting go of all, because when we're in these difficult moments, when we share a, when we have a, like intense hardship over a prolonged period of time, right? Burned out, whatever you experience.
And then it gets to the point where you just, I don't know, I've had this with different guests that there's this moment and it clicks and then something different starts.
There's a different path opened for you, right? So I guess the question I want to ask you is, do you think, as a performance coach and business coach, do you think that for peak performance, it's necessary to go through such moments to actually hit rock bottom? Or if not, does it help?
I used to... say for years, the no is the short answer, right? So the short answer is no, I don't think it's necessary.
What I do believe is that people, generally speaking, Roman, we have three drivers, okay? So we have a driver to move away from pain.
So we're desperate to get away from pain or we're desperate to get towards pleasure.
So if you kind of think of like an upside down T, you've got pain on one side, pleasure on the other.
So in Every single person on the planet is going to have moments in their life at some point where things haven't gone as they would have expected.
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