Fly on the E-Commerce Cyberwall

Is It OK to Be Afraid?
I just want to clear up something from my post yesterday. I went all rah-rah on you about venturing out into the unknown and treating the building of your business as an adventure of overcoming obstacles, like in the movies.

I don't want to come across as saying that you have to be Indiana Jones, always cool, collected and fearless, in order to stand a chance of succeeding. Most heros in the movies are far from that when they start out.

Consider Luke Skywalker, for example. At the beginning of the movie he's whining about how his uncle refuses to let him seek adventure in exotic new world of college.

So Luke stumbles upon these silly droids who take him to this crazy old man who tells him, "Guess what, Luke. We're going to go off together and save the universe!" And what does good old adventure-starved Luke say? "But... but... but... my uncle needs me at home to tend the crops!"

Yep. Good old Luke. When faced with a real adventure, he suddenly wants the safety of home.

And you find that with the vast majority of characters in the stories we love. They won't take on the adventure on their own. They have to be forced into it.

It's only after they find themselves with no choice but to move forward that they do. And it's only the growth they experience along the way that enables them to act heroically at the end.

It's the same thing with our adventure on the good ship entrepreneur. As we sit back in the safety of working for somebody else, we all long for the benefits of running our own business -- the income, the freedom, the status.

But as soon as we face the reality of what it takes to build a business, we go all "But... but... but..." on ourselves.

We discover that we need to do a lot of new things we know nothing about and we are tempted to shrink away from them into the easy and familiar. For many people, that's where the entrepreneurial adventure ends, with us "But... but... butting" ourselves right out of business and back into the old, familiar life we were trying to escape.

No, being afraid of the unfamiliar path we need to take is nothing unusual. It's part of the journey.

But, like Luke, we need something to force us into action. For Luke, it was clear-cut. The evil Empire destroyed all that was familiar to him and gave him no choice but to take the path of adventure. For us, it usually isn't.

No evil Empire is going to come along and force us to journey down the unfamiliar path of entrepreneurship. We have to take that initiative ourselves. We need to recognize the pull of the old and the familiar, the time-wasters and the dead ends, that suck us away from tackling the tasks that actually propel us toward our goal.

To a certain degree, we actually have it tougher than Luke did. Somebody made the choice of adventure for him. And once he was on that path, there was no turning back.

We walk a path where we have to motivate ourselves daily to continue forward. Because the easy chair of our old life is always right there within easy reach for us to sink back into.

Don't give in to the fears, the uncertainties, the apprehensions that try to send you scurrying back to the old ways you wanted to leave behind. Move forward. The Marines have a saying, "Pain is just weakness leaving the body."

In the same way, fears, uncertainties, and apprehensions are just weaknesses leaving your heart. Move forward. Your journey will strengthen you. And who knows. It may just strengthen you enough to be a hero to somebody else.
Jeff


P.S. The first step in becoming an entrepreneur is to change your mindset. And I know of nothing better to help with that than BANABU.

What is BANABU? It's a no-nonsense set of exercises to help you change your mindset to a more successful one. It was created by someone who has overcome some pretty dramatic obstacles in his life to enjoy a pretty awesome life.

It has definitely helped me. In my opinion, it's definitely worth checking out.

Labels: BANABU, mindset, motivation