Entrepreneurs, fear of success and the myth of the common

“You are testing my patience.”

I had just shared an article with my husband about “Secret Dinners,” a new modern trend making its way from Chicago to New York. Essentially, these underground “restaurants” offer gourmet dinners at parties by invitation only in exchange for “donations.” Sometimes dinners are combined with lounge-style discussions, art shows, or other events. Cool, exclusive, modern. All the fun of running an upscale restaurant without all the hassle of the health department.

I am a woman with many interests. In a recent conversation over lunch, a friend and I managed to tackle a mind-boggling variety of topics including martial arts, knitting and crocheting, gourmet cooking, Tarot cards, dream interpretation, massage/bodywork, marriage, writing, photography, tea ceremonies, pottery, journaling, and what you plan to do when your nest is empty a year from now. This was before I read the Secret Dining article, which now got me thinking about our monthly parties and the musicians I’d love to play for us and how a playwright friend might want to use our house as a stage for a play. Perhaps a little Midsummer Night’s Dream in our forest?

My husband knows me very well and followed my stream of unspoken thoughts to their logical conclusion while I casually ate dinner and waited for him to finish reading. Once he got to the end, he calmly placed the paper on the table, looked me in the eye and said, “No, you can’t open a restaurant in our house.” All attempts to deny that he had been seriously considering the idea were met with patient silence and that knowing look that told me he wasn’t kidding anyone.

Then he asked the Question of Death: “When are you going to do what you’re really supposed to do and write your book?”

“What, but I don’t know what the book is.”

“Yes, you do. You also know the next one. You think you have to know the whole book before you write it, but it doesn’t work that way. Everything you’re learning and everything you know means nothing to anyone unless you go to do something with it.”

To make matters worse, he then listed all the things I had been dabbling in, both for fun and profit, since leaving my previous career. With my newly awakened entrepreneurial spirit added to all my previous law interests, my list of activities had grown to absolutely ridiculous proportions. After a long history of job burnout and a passionate desire to create an ideal life, I had somehow stumbled upon a love affair with one distraction after another.

Yes, my enterprising little chickadees, it takes one to know one. I understand what it’s like to live with a brain that keeps churning out an endless stream of ideas for business and pleasure. I suspect that true entrepreneurs are born and not made and that it simply won’t be possible for people connected in this way to control their flow of ideas. Nor should they.

However, there is an art to recognizing which ideas are just bright, shiny distractions and which ones are actually worth pursuing. Here are a few points to consider to help you on your way:

Be honest with yourself and your feelings about success. Entrepreneurs can be incredibly resistant to compromise, always wondering if a better, cooler, funnier, more interesting idea is about to come along. Is it possible that you are holding back from committing because success in one field may limit your ability to play in other areas of your creative sandbox? What has been the reward of not letting any of your ideas take the lead? What will help you choose the “right” idea to put your energy behind?

On this last point, I suggest giving serious consideration to the idea that has been cropping up again and again in every list, journal, and master plan you’ve written in the last ten or twenty years. You know which one. He may appear in different clothes from time to time, but the basic idea or theme always comes through. Maybe you want to promote wellness in some way, shape or form. Perhaps your interest lies in the field of social change. Maybe you are always bringing order to chaos and you like to create environments that suit certain needs. Maybe you are always organizing events or creating experiences for people.

What is it that always gets relegated to the realm of the hobby that you keep coming back to no matter how many new things have been added to your life? What is so easy for you that you simply refuse to respect it?

Remember the myth of communality. Many would be entrepreneurs and small business owners who don’t value what they are brilliant at precisely because they achieve it so easily. We assume that what is easy for us must be easy for everyone. Ironically, the easier something is for us, the less value we place on it, while admiring others who exhibit the seeming ease that comes with mastery, such as icons Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, and Carlos Santana.

Many of us have taken on such negative connotations about work and what it feels like that it takes some dedication and commitment to regain respect for one’s natural talents. However, if this is not done, there is a risk that one’s greatest assets will be minimized and attempts to employ them will be limited to the status of a hobby. It is important to resist treating one’s passion, that which you do as easily as breathing, as common currency and all attempts to use it as side activities.

Learn to see everything you already know. Nietzsche implores us to be who we are. Too often, adults blatantly reject or ignore gifts that they have been displaying in some form or fashion since childhood. I recently learned from my mother that I started speaking at nine months old, short sentences a year. Is it any wonder I write and communicate for a living? I’ve been immersed in personal development work since I was 18, but it took me until almost 43 and my husband’s insistence on looking this straight in the eye. While I certainly enjoyed the playground of my mind and its endless stream of ideas, I had almost mastered the art of stopping just short of fully acknowledging what I most wanted to pursue.

Dedication to what you hold most dear is a fearsome thing. I suspect many of you know exactly what I’m talking about. The risks of failure can be devastating to consider. Jumping from one creative game to another creative game is much more entertaining and the psychic cost of any failed experiments is effectively minimized in such activities. However, I suggest that the alternative is much worse. The alternative is that you never really show up.

I leave you with Martha Graham, who said it so beautifully:

There is a vitality, a life force, an acceleration that translates through you into action, and there is only one like you in all time, this expression is unique, and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium. ; and get lost