Hi there!
I’ve read through your thread and actually have a lot of thoughts about this. I haven’t achieved my big entrepreneurial dreams yet, but I’ve managed to grow and keep a profitable e-commerce business in a small niche for more than a decade now, so maybe I know a thing or two that could hopefully help you in some way.
Do you realize you’ve been posting here saying you’ll show us your progress with your business since 2022? We’re in February 2024, and your last post was still saying the same thing. It seems to me that this inaction could be a symptom of the following things: fear of risk and the unknown, lack of discipline, overthinking, and fear of commitment.
I usually refrain from giving advice to anyone since, as my parents always say, “our experiences are only of use to ourselves,” so I’ll only share what I’ve learned throughout the years. If even one tiny thing prompts you to reflect on your situation or proves somehow useful to you, then I’m happy to have taken the time to write this.
(This is going to be a looong post; please bear with me.)
Fear of risk and the unknown
I’ll translate an excerpt from a text written by a highly successful entrepreneur from my country:
“You’re not scared of leaving your comfort zone. You’re scared of failing, more specifically, you’re scared of its consequences:
1. people gossiping about your failure, and at the same time pretending to sympathize
2. you wasting time and/or money
3. you suffering some negative impact that’s irreversible and never being able to get back up again and resume your life
Of all three of them, the third one needs to be avoided at all costs. Don’t take risks that, in the event of a failure, would put you and your family in a situation of financial ruin, or would irreversibly destroy your health. If something poses such a risk, don't take it, even if it only has a 1% chance of occurring.
Now, items (1) and (2) are part of the game.
Failing or succeeding, people will talk shit about you anyway. Nobody criticizes invisible people. Those who stand out, whether through mistakes or successes, sooner or later, begin to be targeted.
In terms of wasting time and/or money, this is the least you can put on the table to risk aiming for something more. Get used to it. Or do you think it’s possible to build a company or pay for a postgraduate course for 2 years without running the risk of having done all this and it never amounting to anything?
Nothing above average will come without risk.”
Lack of discipline
I've learned that discipline is one of the main tools for building self-confidence and self-esteem. When you prove to yourself that you can keep your word and do what you said you would do, you build self-confidence. You show that you can follow through with any goal you set for yourself.
You start believing you're capable of achieving whatever you want to achieve because your past actions prove this belief. When your belief has concrete proof, it's truthful. This gives you power.
I've learned that when you live a comfortable life without major challenges, you need to set a constant, daily reminder of the life you actually want to have. The inevitable contrast between your dream life and your present one helps create at least a state—however small and manufactured—of discomfort that can spark action.
I realized I needed a mechanism to force me to stop living life on automatic and actually
see what I was doing on a daily basis. At some point in the past, I decided that I would take photos of what I was doing every day so that I could make a real assessment of how I was spending my weeks, months, and years.
The antidote to life's automatic routine is constant awareness.
Beside the other things I did
mentioned in this post here, this year I bought a small whiteboard that I hung on the wall near my bed. A part of it has a list of my daily tasks, and the other part has the goals I need to achieve that month. The board is arranged in my room in such a way that it's impossible for me to avoid looking at it, and, consequently, it's impossible to ignore the goals I've set for myself. Not taking action on them, when they are staring at me right in the face and reminding me of their existence every day, feels more shameful and uncomfortable than the discomfort of working on my goals.
You have to make the pain of inaction greater than the pain of action. Find the fuel that will make you act. I'm the type of person who works better doing things out of anger or to avoid shame than out of motivation or even enthusiasm.
Overthinking
This year, I've committed myself to taking back the type of curiosity I had when I was a little girl. I have a (sometimes good, sometimes bad) habit of visualizing an idea and imagining its outcome decades down the road, the moment of victory after years of work. This is good and bad for two reasons: good because it gets me motivated to make it happen, and bad because it ends up leaving me a bit overwhelmed when I realize all the things I don't know and all the complications and changes that will be necessary throughout the development of that idea.
So I try to go back to a state of childlike curiosity. Childlike curiosity isn’t concerned with the future, but with the present. It doesn't waste time wondering if this business idea is good enough, if there isn't a better one out there, if it will bear any fruit, if it will get super complex and challenging later on. It doesn’t paralyze itself by overthinking all the possibilities and future complications. It just takes an interest in an idea and thinks,
Oh, that sounds exciting! I want to do that! And it does. It takes the first tiny baby step. And then another.
When I opened my little online store, I was 12 years old. I remember being excited about the idea I had, and all I wanted to do at that moment was put it into practice, bring it to the real world, and show it to real people. Develop my product and make my first sale. I had dealt with the consequences, good and bad, as they came—in the same carefree way that children dip their toes in the water and let the waves reach their skin. They don't anticipate the waves. The waves are going to come anyway; they know that, so why fear them or waste time worrying about them? The waves can be cold or warm. Big or small. Take you by surprise or seem obvious. Almost drown you or embrace your body. But that's the adventure, isn't it? Being close enough to the sea. All they need to do is dip their toe in the water, sink their feet into the sand, and stay.
Fear of commitment
Here's a passage written by Oliver Burkeman, author of Four Thousand Weeks:
"I think that in keeping your options open, in refusing to commit to things—career paths, relationships, anything—there is that feeling, isn't there? That you retain the control because you haven't allowed yourself to be pinned down to enter your life completely. You're holding back, you could walk away from anything at any moment.
And it feels like you’re maintaining the control of the situation but because time just keeps on marching on, if you do that for very long you end up using up large chunks of your life you never get back just holding back from life. So, burning bridges, making irreversible commitments is a counter force to that because it acknowledges your limitations, it says I only have one life to live, it says
At some point I have to go all in on something, it sacrifices that lovely feeling of being in control because you haven't committed to anything. And what you get in return is to enter more fully into the real experience of being alive while you still are."
This is what commitment feels like to me
Committing to something means I'm making a promise to myself to keep working on that one thing, even if a thousand other ideas seem better and prettier and easier.
Committing to that one thing means it is the first thing I'm working on right in the morning, after breakfast, and before anything else.
Committing to it means I will strive to move forward a little bit every day, even if on some days it's one percent and on others it's ten percent.
It means I won't speculate about the infinite possibilities of a nebulous future, but will focus on what I can do
now and figure out what my next tiny baby step will be.
It means allowing myself to have days of sadness, doubt, and defeat, allowing myself to cry and want to quit everything, and the next day going back to work as if nothing happened.
It means accepting and welcoming my emotions, but not letting them dictate my actions.
It means keeping my word to myself and staying true to a path for years.
A few last remarks
1- The biggest risk of all in life is to take no risk at all.
2- You don't need to quit your job to start and build a business from scratch, but you
do need to prioritize your business before anything else and make sure you take action to develop it every day.
3- When you're in a comfortable situation,
it's up to you to create your own discomfort. It's up to you to remind yourself daily of all the unkept promises you've made to yourself.
5- You have to be careful not to let your emotions, routine, and challenges take you off your path.
6- You don't need to complicate anything. You just need to dip your toes in the water and take that first step. And then another. And the next one. For years.
One last passage of text from the same entrepreneur mentioned on that first topic:
"Let me tell you about my criteria for giving up... I only give up when it stops making sense in the long run. I don't quit because it's difficult. I don't quit because I find the task boring. I don't give up because I'm tired. And I don't give up because I failed the first, second, third, tenth time.
I only give up when it stops making sense in my long-term vision. As long as this condition is met, the message I give myself after each failure will always be the same: 'Again!’”
I hope this has helped you in some way. Best of luck!
