Overcoming fear

This is the fourth of my crowd sourced blog entry ideas as suggested by Lani Pauli. Lani wanted to get my thoughts on the following: How to overcome the fear to take the leap and do your own thing.


I’ve written about this a few times. And I’ll start by pointing out previous entries on De-gearing, Quit your job and The number 1 reason being an employee sucks. But to make things contemporaneous here’s my thoughts on the topic today, off the top of my head.

Two important words come to mind when I think about the fear of pursuing entrepreneurial endeavors.

Having & Doing.

And as far as I can tell these two words are what we worry about when it comes to finance. We want to do cool stuff (like build a startup and pursue dreams), but in the short term it can have a big impact on our lifestyle and consumption patterns – the having part.

But most people don’t realize this important fact until after they have made the leap:

“The having is in the doing”

In my view we often replace our dreams and goals with consumption. And society promotes this ideal. We use money and steady income as a means of consumption based happiness. When in reality, we’d be much happier if we just did what we wanted to and had greater fulfillment in the hours of our days.

We have to make a decision on what’s more important to us; having lots of stuff and security, or doing cool things. I believe the latter creates a more enjoyable existence, and often leads to a virtuous circle where you realize how little we really need.

The real bonus is this: it’s easier to be successful when you are really into what you spend your time on. And when success comes to entrepreneurs we get the best of both worlds.

Startup blog says: Dream chase now!

5 thoughts on “Overcoming fear

  1. Hi Steve,

    another interesting post! “The having is in the doing” totally agree with you on that except that there is a pretty huge dip inbetween doing and having as you’d know all startups face.

    Two things that might help are:

    1. Switching your view from instant gains (employee “i get paid i go shopping” mentality) to a time based perspective. eg. “Okay so I’ll buy some goodies when I hit x goal in the business”.

    and

    2. Protect the downside – which was one of Rene Rivkin’s famous philosophies before he passed away. So you strip off all the frills and thrills and work out how much you need to survive + rainy day savings and make sure you got that much $$ coming in from some sort of income.

    These two things have really helped me through the last 5 years in business and i’m sure they’ll continue to carry me through any future rough patches.

    Keep the wisdom flowing Champ!

    AJ~
    @BLKMGK01

  2. Yes. Having less stuff is completely worth feeling of going after what you were made to do. As long as you can pay ur bills too.

    Clare (@clarelancaster via twitter)

  3. it makes me depressed. Doing what I really want to do is impossible without a bit of cash to keep it ticking along :o(

    Jason Xolmer (@jaseygalore via twitter)

  4. Hey Aj,

    Nice additional comments – it is a mentality shift. I also use the rainy day principal and saved lots of back up cash before I made the leap – it is a nice common sense approach.
    Steve.

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