How adopting an entrepreneurial mindset can serve you, even if you are not an entrepreneur! High achievers: this one is for you :)
I did a promotion recently and had zero engagement. Zero. It got me thinking about how I could really let this stop me from trying another one. But as someone building my own business, allowing that small ‘failure’ to stop me would be allowing a small one to lead to a big one. Not only that, what I am really stopping is living an expression of my purpose through my work. It is in these moments that I have to remind myself to embody an entrepreneurial mindset rather than a worker mindset.
We are conditioned from an early age to have a “worker mindset''. It starts in school. Most standardised education systems are about:
Working hard
Following rules
Learning at a lower knowledge level
Not failing
Doing it perfectly
For high achievers it is so hard to fail!
But an “entrepreneur mindset” is all about failing, about failing forward: trying and failing. And not even seeing it as a failure. Seeing the things you do as things you are trying out, testing as if in a laboratory. Not everything will work. The task is to embrace it. To trust that when something doesn’t work so well or go so well, that it is setting the stage or preparing you for something that will. That there is always learning to be done. As I shared in last week’s blog, if you set the intention for internal results - learning and growth - then really there is no failure anyway :)
This applies even if you are not an entrepreneur. Whatever job you currently do, consider the impact that having to get it “right” and being afraid to fail is having on how you show up each day. And what you make the results mean about YOU.
Usually, when we are avoiding failure, what we are really being challenged by or avoiding is being rejected. Underneath the setback or “failure” we are usually protecting a belief or fear that we will only be liked or accepted when we over-perform (I see you, high achiever). The deep conditioning of the worker mindset at work!
However, if you can see every day as an opportunity to embrace the experiment, to see the opportunity to learn no matter what the outcome, to trust that if something didn’t work (or you didn’t get that ‘win’) that this is freeing you up for something better in the end, it will create so much internal freedom.
Perhaps you would like to be an entrepreneur, to have a go at turning your passion into some kind of business. But you have a strong voice (hello, ego) telling you that it is too risky. You know that this is a fearful voice, afraid of failure. Which is totally normal, because we have been conditioned to think this way. Maybe now however, you want to look that fear in the eye and say : okay then, maybe I will fail. Maybe I won't. But either way it isn’t so bad. I will survive.
Is there something you would love to do or try if you knew you couldn’t fail?
If something pops into your mind when I ask this question, that’s a great insight that there is something purposeful calling you, and the fear of failure is getting in your way.
Why not try on an entrepreneur mindset for the next few days and see how that shifts your view of trying this thing out.
Would love to know how you get on!
Wishing you a weekend filled with the joys of Spring :)
Elle xo
