Anyone can start their entrepreneurial journey, but can anyone maintain it or keep up with it ?
The true entrepreneurs tend to be naturally more optimistic than non-entrepreneurs, sometimes even to the point of over-optimism.
Entrepreneurship involves systematically and continuously taking on risk in the decisions they mostly make. Their chances of succeeding, especially over the longer term, are not easy and depressingly small. While statistics about entrepreneurial success vary, they are all consistent in pointing out how hard it is to succeed.
Entrepreneurship or Entrepreneurial spirit is a mindset. It’s an attitude and approach to thinking that actively seeks out change, rather than waiting to adapt to change. It’s a mindset that embraces critical questioning, critical thinking, innovation, service, impact and continuous improvement. “It’s about seeing the big picture and thinking like an owner with big ambition and responsibility.
“It’s being agile, never resting on your triumphs, shaking off the cloak of complacency and seeking out new opportunities. It’s about taking ownership and pride in your organization.”
Sara Sutton Fell, CEO and founder of FlexJobs, says: “To me, an entrepreneurial spirit is a way of approaching situations where you feel empowered, motivated, and capable of taking things into your own hands.
According to me personally: Entrepreneurial Spirit is a systematic and constant optimistic, motivated and agile mindset that someone has to be willingly taking calculated risks and be ready to fail and a mindset that likes to solve problems and challenges.
Optimism
This is a skill many don’t take it seriously. But the truth is, entrepreneurship and professional advancement is tough work. Every day isn’t great. The wins are far less frequent than the losses. And it can be very easy to fall into a state of mind where your day to day is seen as stressful, overwhelming, and a pain.
Optimism isn’t a weakness. Optimism is the state of mind that will give you endurance for the long road ahead.
The ability to be optimistic and positive, even in the face of great obstacles, is not to be undervalued. You’re the one who chose to pursue a path of success. You’re the one who wanted to build something great. You’re the one who chose this life, for yourself. So, don’t look for the bad, the ugly, and the stressful. Instead, look for things to be thankful for: like the fact that you even have the opportunity to pursue what you’re passionate about in the first place.
if you want to make it to the summit, remember this: it’s all in your head.
Optimism will spark creative thinking and it will push you to generate new ideas
Optimistic people tend to be more creative in their thinking. Why?
“The optimistic people tend to naturally think about what the future will look like which allows optimists to distance themselves from negative constraints and approach positive outcomes, creating innovative ideas in their mind.“
Thinking in this way about the future is a good thing if you are an entrepreneur. Research shows that when people are future-oriented (as optimists tend to be) and when they think vividly about distant futures in a positive way (How will the world be like ten years from now? or twenty years from now?), it stimulates all kinds of creative ideas about what such a world will contain, and how we can get there. For entrepreneurs, such a thought process will lead to new ideas for new products, new services, or new businesses having a greater chance of success.
Optimism will make entrepreneurs bounce back after a failure.
As we have seen at the outset, launching a successful new business is very difficult. Even the most competent and lucky entrepreneur will encounter failure at one time or another. What happens after that? As one paper pointed out:
“Exploratory and inventive organizational activities … involve high base rates of failure and they call for highly resilient actors who must valiantly persevere for eventual success.”
Optimistic entrepreneurs are resilient in two significant ways. First, they are emotionally more resilient. Where failure normally produces ruminative thoughts about how and why it happened, and what could have been done to avoid it, optimists don’t fall into this trap. Instead, they focus on the task of moving on and starting their next venture. The second type of resilience is cognitive. Thinking positively encourages optimistic people to think more broadly which in turn allows them to be flexible and open to new ideas. They can move on more quickly and to better quality ideas. Pessimists, on the other hand, tend to be narrow-focused in their thinking. While this may be helpful under some circumstances, it will hold you back if you are trying to bounce back from a business failure.
Optimism will lead you to success
There is some emerging evidence that optimism may be linked to financial success of entrepreneurs. The researchers found that entrepreneurs’ optimism was associated with a greater increase in their company’s profits a year later. Another study argued that “the relationship between optimism and new venture performance may be positive up to moderate levels of optimism” but also found that at excessive levels of optimism, the relationship was negative. From these findings, one thing is clear: If you are entrepreneur, being optimistic (but not excessively so) provides motivation, emotional fortitude, and cognitive resilience.
Life Lessons, Life Goals and Happiness
Learn to lower expectations, (if you can’t) completely get rid of expectations on someone for something especially in relationship, practice gratitude every day, always question your WHY and try to find the answer of it, live your life with (non materialistic) life goals, have a bigger purpose and vision, there’s nothing wrong to work hard, hustle and earn a lot of money but make sure that it (money) is not your ultimate goal in life – use the money as a tool to reach your bigger purpose, to make a difference and you wake up every day with a great energy and self-satisfaction that leads to complete happiness without being attached to materialistic life goals.
Life Goals Matters
While many in today’s society strive for wealth, the pursuit of money and status appears to actively damage your well-being.
non-materialistic life goals such as spending time with family or friends, volunteering and do good things can lead to happiness.
Why materialistic life goals harm you ?
So the question is: why do less or non-materialistic goals make people happier than materialistic ones?
The probable explanation is so-called ‘status anxiety’. This means that once you’ve achieved a higher level of status, it’s no longer enough, you feel pressure to live up to that status, maintain your lifestyle, and indeed to accomplish more. Materialistic goals create a spiral of higher goals, more work stress and less connection.
Conclusions on non-materialistic life goals :
It’s not intrinsically bad to have ambition because this can motivate us day by day, but this ambition should be used in healthy and productive ways. The conclusion to gather from this is that the pursuit of materialistic goals should not be at the expense of personal life and non-materialistic goals.
The sensible solution is to find a balance between looking after your financial needs and your family, while at the same time not forgetting to look after your ‘soul’. This balance takes ambition and motivation to achieve. However, the rewards are well worth the effort.
There’s so much to gain from dedicating a fair portion of your time to yourself, your God/Creator, your family, friends and local community. As these create good, deep connections and relationships, and those are the keys to a happy life. High-quality deep relationships are one of the basis of a happy life.
#StillLearning
Purpose – Driven Business For Millennial
Ever wondering about why the word purpose – driven business has become a buzzword in business today ? especially among Millennial generation ?
I am a millennial. My generation is also known as Generation Y, Echo Boomer, or Generation ME. The world likes to describe me as an easily distracted, politically correct, civic-minded, creative narcissistic who wants a trophy just for showing up. I am supposedly a seeker of the authentic and an entitled “adult” who was born between the years of 1981-1997.
Lazy, entitled, delusional, narcissistic and unreliable are just some of the buzzwords managers are using to describe millennials. Most people – even people who are considered millennials – seem to perpetuate this negative connotation that the millennial generation is the problem in today’s workforce. In 2013, according to Hubspot, 68 percent of corporate recruiters said it was difficult to manage millennials.
While it is true some people from this generation are entitled, lazy and delusional, one-size doesn’t fit all. To win with a millennial workforce, you need to give them a sense of purpose and the freedom to succeed on their terms. Adopt these principles to succeed with this age group.
These labels are often for anyone who looks relatively young, and they distract from what my generation really is all about and our unique position in the today’s economy. The reality is that millennials are currently the largest generation in the world’s workforce.
So where are millennials spending all their hard-earned money and why? Millennials support companies that commit to a higher purpose and are more inclined to buy from a brand that stands on a foundation of corporate responsibility. For instance, most of millennials say that they base their purchasing decisions on whether or not a company makes positive social efforts.
Why ?
We are the first generation to be raised with portals to unlimited information in our pockets, able to Google anything and any information they receive. We’ve been programmed to seek out sources of truth and spend our days seeking transparency above all else.
Focus on purpose and bigger game
Above all, I must say that we are a generation that was taught to question the world we live in today.
The focus on purpose is not just a new trend that will disappear over time. The strive to search for meaning in the world—and contribute to it—is implemented deep down in our soul.
The constant search for authenticity and truth is one of the fundamental reasons why I believe we gravitate – both personally and professionally – toward purpose-driven businesses. While many of us are still searching for our purpose in this wild world, we support and respect any enterprise that pursues a purpose as relentlessly and as passionately as we do each and every day.
We are attracted to businesses that have the audacity to puff their chests out and show their true positive purpose for all to see.
We do make mistakes and we will always try to learn from our mistakes in order to be able to to grow personally and professionally.
Please give us a chance
From a Millennial