GAME OVER -Defeating the Entrepreneur's Greatest Obstacle….
Fear
Did you ever finally beat up your bully? I have to ask that question because everyone has encountered a bully somewhere along the walk of their life. Whether that bully was in elementary school, middle school, high school, or today’s common bully is “social networking bully.” At some point, we have all had to face a fear of some sort. What did you do when that time came to face your fear? Many of my American friends have shared with me that during their childhood days, when the fear was a bully from school, their relatives would not allow them to come home until they had a report that they “tore into that bully like a windmill in a tornado” and didn’t stop until the bully cried “uncle”! (Opie Taylor from The Andy Griffith Show). It is okay if you came home with a bruise or two, but you had better stand your ground, and you had better stand it with all that you’ve got until the bell rings and “Game Over”. The point being is that you never allow fear to control your life. You grab fear by the horns and you tackle it with all that you’ve got. And that philosophy stands true in entrepreneurship and business as well. FEAR, believe it or not, is an ambitious person's most amazing deterrent, and it wastes no time rearing its ugly head when those who are inspired to achieve the unimaginable start out on their quest. The distinction between an established entrepreneur and a perpetually envisioning nine-to-fiver is that the previous was ready to "take the jump." He/she was eager to look that tiger in the eye, without flinching, and succeed. Ordinarily, as a business begins to take flight, trepidation can represent the moment of truth and can be a catalyst for both failure as well as development and thriving. Regardless of the amount of achievement an ambitious person attains, fear of disappointment, of going out on a limb, of dismissal, and of executing new procedures, remains the most injuring risk to his/her organization's prosperity.
Think about all the most noteworthy profile organizations going today: Amazon, Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, without any end in sight. They were all conceived of a striking thought that rapidly developed into a megacorporation worth billions of dollars. Suppose it is possible that Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak lacked the perseverance and tenacity to construct that first computer in their home carport. Imagine a scenario where Jeff Bezos had expected that nobody would ever need to purchase a book he couldn't first hold in his grasp. Suppose that may Larry Page, and Sergey Brin didn't have faith that their internet search engine capability could handle Yahoo. Should any of these great achievers succumbed to their fears and the many obstacles they had to hurdle, the world wouldn't have Apple; it wouldn't have Amazon, and it wouldn't have Google. What is your creative genius conjuring up? You may already be at the helm of, or officially running, a future multi-billion dollar incredibly imaginative organization. Don't look surprised! It's completely conceivable. However, it will never be tangible if you allow common fears, and I say common, because every entrepreneur experiences these same fears: Disappointment, misfortune, losing hard-earned money, etc. These are no new fears; however, successful entrepreneurs do not allow these apprehensions to hinder prosperity and the capacity to enhance, create, and duplicate. Can you count the number of potentially phenomenal plans that you decided not to pursue? What prevented you from going after them? You cannot attribute your lack of pursuit to the unknown fact that they were bad plans; that reason will not take flight. How would you be able to verify the viability of those plans if you never tested them out? Financing cannot be attributed to the cause either because a large percentage of the best organizations on the planet made their first strides with little to nothing in their pockets. What held you back was FEAR. FEAR of the unknown, fear of the outcome not meeting the standards of society, so you put them back in your idea can, and placed it on a shelf to collect dust. My challenge to you: Map out your next business pursuit by listing your launch date. If you are a settled business owner, select a date to "tame the beast of change" in your organization or start a new service or add a new product. After you have made your list, and you have considered enormous concerns and minute concerns, make this one inquiry to yourself: Where are the potential risks? Look at your replies. Regardless of how noteworthy or immaterial each response may appear, write them just the same. This schedule will turn into a physical representation of your reasons for alarm. Don't stress if your schedule is long. Everybody, even the surest of pioneers, succumb to periodic uncertainty.
We have our list of the unfathomable, now what? I recommend two methodologies to annihilate these pesky pests: 1. Attack them head-on. The best way to kill apprehension is truly to do the thing that is bringing on such fear. If startup is the concern, quit agonizing over subsidizing, rivalry, and the dangers to your advertising fight and begin propelling your business. Don't pause for actualizing change. The time is today. Look your tiger in the eye, and make your move. 2. Prepare yourself to think in an unexpected way. Okay, we have our list of apprehensions, got it, now tuck them away. And whenever you end up harping on something from your list, redirect your focus to the center of your affirmations. Rid our thoughts of how we may fail, rather, think on how we may succeed. Now that I have shared those two fear-solving techniques with you, I will impart my last two thoughts with you which you may find simple and rather amusing. Reflect back to when you were a child, and you had to battle with something whether it was math, English, science, a bully, or making the basketball team. Think back to how you resolved those issues. You stood up to the challenge, and you confronted those issues in alarm because you weren't certain what the outcome might be. But the simple fact remains that you confronted them. You approached the issues, you figured out how to illuminate it, and after that you proceeded onward. You think back now to whatever the case may have been, and what was once overwhelming has now gotten basic. You may even chuckle at the thought of what you feared. Lastly, when contemplating your apprehensions regardless of how debilitating they may appear to be never forget to make this vital inquiry: "What's the most exceedingly terrible thing that could happen?" I talked with numerous very successful people for The New American Millionaires, and I received an overwhelming identical response to this one fear-tackling inquiry: The majority of them answered "What is the absolute worst thing that could happen?" With that in mind, they proceeded to build successful empires. GAME OVER. (So to speak...) Once you come to that understanding, you will find that your reasons for alarm are nothing to fear as well, when it’s all said and done. Attempting and falling flat is a far superior conclusion than letting alarm win and never attempting whatsoever. You can’t fall if you’re standing still. You must keep moving. Please feel free to re post this on your social networks, and by all means, we welcome you to join our Million Dollar Success Movement. Author: Dr. Ken Odiwé http://www.TheEntrepreneurSuccessInstitute.com About the Author: Dr. Ken Odiwé is the Founder and CEO of Waterstone Management, a boutique consulting firm helping entrepreneurs and companies reach their peak performance. He is also the founder of ‘The Entrepreneur Success Institute’. Dr. Ken is on a mission to share
the secrets of The New American Millionaires with as many people as possible, so that they can experience the transformation that comes with increased wealth.