Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

Wants to go into commercial driving, snail farming, etc., but am afraid of what will happen, that is, will I be able to achieve success or not - fear of the unknown.  What should I do?

1 word....Research

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Life is a sum of all your choices!

http://www.ourfunnel.com

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Rosanna Tussey
Owner
New Mexico Candle Co.
http://www.nmcandleco.com

In my opinion, there`s no such thing as a fear of the unknown. We use the word "unknown" as a placeholder to mean "whatever is the opposite of the known."

The way I argue the case is that you can`t have a "thing" that doesn`t exist. You can refer to it, but it still doesn`t exist. Therefore something else is causing the fear.

"Dark" doesn`t exist. There`s only the lack of light. We need a way, in language (which drives our thinking and emotional responses) to refer to that absence of light. So we call it "dark."

The "unknown" is either chaos, or lack of certainty---the known.

Your fear, then, is rather that you have a low tolerance for the uncertain. And your quest is for certainty.

The problem is that whenever you start something new, it`s almost impossible to be completely certain of the outcome. That`s a function of reality and life, complex systems, variables, chaos theory, and so forth.

So: Examine your "need" for certainty, then take a look at your risk-tolerance. If you`re not capable of, or have little desire for risk, then perhaps you`d do better to invest in a business someone else is starting. :-)

On the other hand, if you believe you can change your level of tolerance for risk, then the best you can do is extract those variables with the highest certainty factor and focus on them. Isolate those low-certainty factors, and spend your research efforts on seeing if you can improve their level of certainty.

If you can Imagine it, It can happen!

-------------------------

Life is a sum of all your choices!

http://www.ourfunnel.com

Craig has a good point, as usual.  What I have noticed is that when people say they have a fear of the unknown, that "unknown" isn`t unknown at all. It is usually something (or several things) that they have defined rather precisely but in an effort not to put the cart before the horse, they refer to it as the "unknown". In reality, they have dressed it up and given it a life of its own.  It`s easy to fall into that trap when you don`t have certainty.

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Rosanna Tussey
Owner
New Mexico Candle Co.
http://www.nmcandleco.com

Rosanna, that`s a really cool point...! You`re right, it usually isn`t the "unknown" they`re afraid of. It`s what they imagine might happen, they`re not certain how to avoid, and whatever the details, it`ll be a total catastrophe.

Most Excellent, and something to think about !!