Sunday, September 04, 2005
Business skills = Life skills (Courage to explore)
Here's another life skill that is also a crucial business skill. One of the biggest obstacles that I've seen hamper attempts to start a business is business owners' fear of exploring outside of their comfort zone. I've described in previous blog entries numerous traps that are easy to fall into. Most of them stem from that fear.
There's no way around it. When you start a new business, you are stepping out into territory you've never explored. Even if you've started businesses in the past, each one is still new territory because every business you start will force you to learn new things and overcome new obstacles.
And wishful thinking that we can somehow bypass all this exploration and jump straight from our starting point to a point where we suddenly enjoy all the success we hope for is as unrealistic as is thinking that we can find a way to magically transport ourselves instantaneously from New York to Los Angeles. Just as a physical journey requires us travel one step at a time toward our destination, the journey from our business startup to established, successful business requires that we travel one step at a time toward that desired destination as well.
There's no avoiding it. Yet I've seen so many people starting small businesses (and I've had to fight this in myself) with an unwillingness to venture beyond what feels safe and familiar. Dreams get lost as we fiddle with minutae that keep us in our comfort zone and protect us from those big, bad new experiences that we're unable to predict and have solved before we even encounter them.
Believe me, I've seen in my life what retreating into a narrower and narrower world, trying to protect yourself from all unpredictibility, can do—and it's not pretty. And doing so in business is just as self-destructive of your dreams of success.
Exploration is a basic part of life. It's what enables us to grow beyond what we currently are into what we are capable of being. And the courage to explore the new world we embark into when we start a new business is what enables us to grow our business—and ourselves—into everything we hope they will be.
Jeff
Here's another life skill that is also a crucial business skill. One of the biggest obstacles that I've seen hamper attempts to start a business is business owners' fear of exploring outside of their comfort zone. I've described in previous blog entries numerous traps that are easy to fall into. Most of them stem from that fear.
There's no way around it. When you start a new business, you are stepping out into territory you've never explored. Even if you've started businesses in the past, each one is still new territory because every business you start will force you to learn new things and overcome new obstacles.
And wishful thinking that we can somehow bypass all this exploration and jump straight from our starting point to a point where we suddenly enjoy all the success we hope for is as unrealistic as is thinking that we can find a way to magically transport ourselves instantaneously from New York to Los Angeles. Just as a physical journey requires us travel one step at a time toward our destination, the journey from our business startup to established, successful business requires that we travel one step at a time toward that desired destination as well.
There's no avoiding it. Yet I've seen so many people starting small businesses (and I've had to fight this in myself) with an unwillingness to venture beyond what feels safe and familiar. Dreams get lost as we fiddle with minutae that keep us in our comfort zone and protect us from those big, bad new experiences that we're unable to predict and have solved before we even encounter them.
Believe me, I've seen in my life what retreating into a narrower and narrower world, trying to protect yourself from all unpredictibility, can do—and it's not pretty. And doing so in business is just as self-destructive of your dreams of success.
Exploration is a basic part of life. It's what enables us to grow beyond what we currently are into what we are capable of being. And the courage to explore the new world we embark into when we start a new business is what enables us to grow our business—and ourselves—into everything we hope they will be.
Jeff
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