Hi friend,
Thank you for opening my letter. It means a lot.
Today, I want to talk to you about the relationship between entrepreneurship and spirituality.
Entrepreneurship is essentially about venturing out to test your ideas in the world. Part of the journey is usually creating and managing a business. Any ideas go. A carpentry business, a restaurant, an online business, writing a book, a marketing agency. It may or may not be innovative. As an entrepreneur, you offer a service or product to the world that you have created or have co-created.
Entrepreneurs change the world. I've read articles about entrepreneurship that has studied the most influential ones in the world and what seems to be a general theme in their line of thinking are two things:
- They don't give up.
- They have a magic thinking (they believe their vision will change the world).
Not giving up on your idea may seem self-evident if you're about to create something new, a brand, a company, a service or a product. It takes time and you kind of have to shift your mindset from I'm gonna nail it the first time to I'm testing this and if it doesn't work right now I'll keep testing until I figure it out.
I spoke to a friend (Dave) last week and we were preparing for a podcast recording. He's an entrepreneur. We went deep. He used an image that I truly loved. He described entrepreneurship as taking a pathway that was not paved. You're walking through the mud. There's no pavement and it may be dark and stormy. People around you may think you're crazy for going on a pathway that nobody has been on before.
But you have to love the mud and get dirty. You have a vision and even when you fall into holes in the mud, you'll get up and keep walking.
Entrepreneurship is very often portrayed as the tech startup founder who ... (dream outcome) in one day. It's not.
Dave and I studied theology together at Princeton. So we talked about the motivation for wanting to go into the mud and walk a pathway with no pavement.
The story of the Prophet Elijah came to my mind for some reason (yeah, he was an entrepreneur!:)). Elijah had been rejecting the Queen Jezebel for supporting the worship of Baal. Elijah spoke harshly against the rituals performed by the priests of Baal. At some point, Elijah was persecuted by Jezebel. This is the point when he went into the wilderness and found a cave to protect him against harsh weathers.
Elijah felt lonely, abandoned and despondent. It was in his harshest hour that he profoundly encountered God. An earthquake, fire and a powerful wind passed by. But it was not in these manifestations that God appeared to him. It was rather in a gentle and quiet whisper within.
Dave and I spoke about how the journey into the mud is just like that. There are storms, there are strong winds and fire on the pathway in life and entrepreneurship. But in all the noise, it's important to make space for solitude and stillness, all to listen to the voice within. Whether you believe in God or not is not the point here.
We can all listen to the voice within if we sit through our storms in life. The storms will come and pass. But most of us are darn afraid of the storms and so we run, as fast as possible, away away.
But if you wait just a bit. You'll discover the voice within that will keep you going into the deep and the unknown.
But why should you do any of this?
You don't have to, if you don't want to. However, if you walk on the unknown path you'll expand.
Entrepreneurship is essentially about expansion. You'll meet your greatest enemy and friend: fear.
It is your enemy because it may keep you from daring into the wilderness. It is your friend because it wants to keep you safe.
So I'm learning to make friends with my fear and see it as a guide. A friend that wants to keep me safe. Not an enemy that tries to keep me from daring into the wilderness.
Here's the beauty: once you walk into the wilderness and get comfortable with your fear, you discover, there's a world out there, and within, that is beautiful.
Until then, be well!
