Be bold, avoid the path of least resistance

The path to entrepreneurial success is forged via breakthroughs, small steps and iterations, each possible because you have your eyes and ears wide open and you’re able to reflect and adjust time after time, with the resilient mindset to keep going.

Resilience is the virtue that enables entrepreneurs to move through hardship and achieve success. No one escapes heartache, uncertainty and disappointment, yet from these setbacks comes wisdom, if we have the virtue of resilience.

Many misunderstand what’s at work in resilience. For me, it’s not about ‘bouncing back’, rather its about the ability to integrate harsh experiences into your entrepreneurial thinking, learn and apply the lessons, and then be motivated to go again, and expecting to go one better.

Entrepreneurs choose this life of challenge and hardship, gambling for achievement, seeking success with joy and humour, but also inevitably encountering times marked by confusion, chaos and disappointment. This is true of everyone’s lives, of course, but the entrepreneur consciously chooses a life in which they are likely to have higher highs and lower lows, in which the peaks and troughs are more vivid than if safer choices made.

Entrepreneurs jump on the roller coaster ride where the tracks haven’t yet been fully built. They’d have it no other way, happy with the wind in their faces and going round blind corners and crazy inclines. A good part of it is fighting the urge to revert back to their comfort zone, and fall back into old habits.

Please make yourself uncomfortable. Becoming a successful entrepreneur is never a straight line. There are lots of ups and downs and zigzags along the way. As it turns out, how you emotionally handle the downs is key. Resilience means not giving up, and being energised by what you have learned, experiencing multiple setbacks along the way, but persevering. As Thomas Edison said, I have not failed. I have just found ten thousand ways that won’t work.

It is not all bad, but it is not all good, it is not all ugly, but it is not all beautiful, it is life, life, life – the only thing that matters, a quote from Thomas Wolfe, which summarises the entrepreneur’s attitude. So stop trying to be realistic, and be resilient.

And that enables you to fight back. It can’t be done. What? You want to build an airplane? You’re crazy. You’ll never make it. Everyone fails and so will you. 1,000 songs in your pocket? You must be kidding, right? An electrical car with a range of 300 miles? You want to be an artist? It’s safer to get a job.

You don’t need guts to get a normal job, and do the usual stuff. Most people are realistic. It’s not realistic to be the first one to build an airplane. It’s not realistic to build an electric car.

But what’s the fun of living a life when you know the outcome already and it’s steady away? Ok, if you never try, you never have to deal with the pain and hurt of failure I’ll give you that. But most of that is self-inflicted. But is that a reason to not do something? Life is also not a contest of ‘my problems are worse than yours’. If it’s attention that you want, get a dog.

The truth is this: you’re trying to be realistic, and I’m telling you stop thinking that way. Think outside the box. Think of flying cars. Unconventional being. Do extraordinary things. People do not decide to become extraordinary. They decide to accomplish extraordinary things said Sir Edmund Hillary, and he should know.

Being resilient means your life doesn’t have to play out like a video on demand that is looping, you’ve seen a dozen times. Is it still worth it to sit through it? Yeah, sure. But it’s not extraordinary. You know the plot, you know the dialogue and you know the we-all-live-happy-ever-after. The End.

So rather than being realistic, think Go. Go. Go, and be resilient. Ryan Holiday, in his book The Obstacle Is The Way, draws lessons from philosophy and history and says if you want to achieve anything in life, you have to do the work, be prepared for knockbacks – but most of all, be resilient.

The Obstacle Is The Way was the first book that I read back to back for some time. Yes, I read the book, thought it was so good that I flipped back to page one and started reading it again. This is a book that gets better every time you read it.

If everyone used the advice from the book, we would all be a lot bolder and mentally able to handle the pressure of running a startup. Here are some quotes from the book, which I think say a lot about building your resilient mindset.

Where the head goes, the body follows. Perception precedes action. Right action follows the right perspective. When something happens, you decide what it means. Is it the end? Or the time for a new start? Is it the worst thing that has ever happened to you? Or is it just a setback? You have the decision to choose how you perceive every situation in life.

No thank you, I can’t afford to panic. Some things make us emotional, but you have to practice to keep your emotions in check and balanced. In every situation, no matter how bad it is, keep calm and try to find a solution. Sometimes the best solution is walking away. Entrepreneurs find it hard to say no, but that can be the best solution at times.

No one is asking you to look at the world through rose-coloured glasses. See the world for what it is. Not what you want it to be or what it should be. Hey, we’re back to being realistic – but it’s also about optimism, the mindset to expect the best outcome from every situation – and that’s resilience to make it happen. This gives entrepreneurs the capacity to pivot from a failing tactic, and implement actions to increase success.

If you want momentum, you’ll have to create it yourself, right now, by getting up and getting started. If you want anything from life, you have to start moving towards it. Only action will bring you closer. Start now, not tomorrow. Maintain active optimism, observing how others were successful in similar situations, and believing you can do the same.

Ask not that events should happen as you will, but let your will be that events should happen as they do, and you shall have peace, Epictetus, a Greek Philosopher said. It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.

It’s okay to be discouraged. It’s not okay to quit. Entrepreneurial life is competitive, and if you want to achieve anything, you have to work hard for it. When you think life is hard know that it’s supposed to be hard. If you get discouraged, try another angle until you succeed. Every attempt brings you one step closer. Don’t have a victim’s mindset, have courage to take decisive action.

Show relentless tenacity and determination. Remember, giving up is simply not an option. Learn that tenacity is self-sustaining when persevering actions are rewarded. Find tenacious role models, and garner the support of peers and friends. Great entrepreneurs become tenaciously defiant when told they cannot succeed. Then they get it done.

We must be willing to roll the dice and lose. Prepare, at the end of the day, for none of it to work. We get disappointed too quickly. The main cause? We often expect things will turn out fine, we have too high expectations. No one can guarantee your success so why not expect to lose? You try with all your effort, it doesn’t work out, you accept it, and move on.

Decisiveness mitigates adversity, helps you rebound, take responsibility, and promotes growth. Building decisiveness requires eliminating fear, procrastination, and the urge to please everyone. Practice making decisions as a positive learning experience. Understand that any decision is usually better than no decision.

The path of least resistance is a terrible teacher. Don’t shy away from difficulty. Don’t do things just because they’re easy. How do you expect to grow? Nurture yourself: gain strength from the unrealistic achievements of others. Surround yourself with high achievers. Avoid toxic people like the plague.

The world might call you a pessimist. Who cares? It’s far better to seem like a downer than to be blindsided or caught off guard. Just doubting yourself just doesn’t work, expecting things not to turn out and to lose is not good enough if you want to accomplish something remarkable. If you rehearse everything that can go wrong in your mind, you will not be caught by surprise when things actually go wrong. The Stoics called this Premeditatio malorum, the premeditation of evils. To be remarkable, you have to expect unreasonable things of yourself.

Don’t waste a second looking back at your expectations. Face forward, and face it with a smug little grin. We can’t choose what happens to us, but we decide how to respond. Successful, resilient entrepreneurs don’t just accept what happens to them. Everything happens for a reason. It’s all fuel that you can use to move forward. It defines you.

The great law of nature is that it never stops. There is no end. When you overcome one obstacle, another one waits in the shadows. Entrepreneurial life is a process of overcoming obstacles, one after the other. The obstacle becomes the way so you might as well enjoy it.

We all need a guiding light when adversity strikes. I’m pretty sure that if you reflect upon and apply one of the above quotes, you’ll top up your own entrepreneurial resilience. You don’t have to use every message from Ryan Holiday, just pick one quote, apply it, and see what happens. For me, it changed everything when I shared this with a number of my startup clients.

Resilience means rebounding back and getting right back in the game, remaining optimistic in the face of adversity. Resilience is accepting your new reality, but being able to take a step back to take a step forward. If you quit in the face of adversity, you’ll spend the rest of your life wondering about it. It’s never to late to be the person you could have been. The goal of resilience is to thrive in adversity.

I’m often struck by the ability of a single individual entrepreneur to change the world. Think Thomas Edison, Elon Musk and Anne Wojcicki, to name a few. They each started with no money and no technology, just their passion and perseverance.

Ultimately, three things make anything possible: People, technology and money. But money and technology alone, without the persistent and passionate human mind driving things forward, are useless.

If I had to name my superpower, it would be my persistence, resilience and mental toughness – maybe it’s my Northern grit – not giving up, even when everyone tells me it isn’t going to work. Had I given up in the face of the criticism or adversity, you wouldn’t be reading this blog post.

The only thing that I see that is distinctly different about me is I’m not afraid to be the last man standing when something needs to be done. I will not be outworked, period. You might have more talent than me, you might be smarter than me, you might be sexier than me, you might be all of those things – you got it on me in nine categories.

But if we get on the treadmill together, there’s two things: You’re getting off first, or I’m going to die. It’s really that simple. For me, my resilience keep me going. Remember that true failure only comes when you give up.

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