Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

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Hi Peter :-) Welcome to Startup Nation (SuN)

I think what`s instructive is the phrasing of your worries---the paranoia, as you say. Note that your main concern is people questioning your right to stand out from the crowd. Also note your worries about using your ego, being confident, being assertive, and generally using a strong set of boundaries around your personality.

I don`t know your age, but in all probability you went through the modern US education system. There, you`re explicitly taught to never stand out, never be "better than someone else," and that it`s completely unfair and downright immoral to ever compete with anyone in anything.

You`re going to have to reconsider the meaning of ego, competition, pride, and competence. You`re going to have to contemplate the idea of being "better" than other people. Without coming to terms with the facts of nature and life, you`ll be doomed to always run away from your own dreams, desires, choices, and options.

Think about it this way: If you were DaVinci or Michelangelo, would you say to everyone, "Aw...shucks...it`s not all THAT great, y`know? It`s just some paint I slapped t`gether while I was bored." I doubt it, otherwise you`d never go anywhere.

Look back at your role models for competition. If they`re as flawed and dysfunctional as I suspect, then the fault lies with the role models, not with you! To that end, search around and find new role models. You might consider reading Ayn Rand`s, "The Virtue of Selfishness," to get a better idea of what`s going on. Or, if you`re more into fiction, try her book, "Atlas Shrugged."

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Our Goal Is Your Success!
Founder Girls with Goals

Wow thank you guys. CraigL you are exactly right in all your assumptions. I did go through the modern US education system. I am 24 yrs old. My role models growing up where of course my mother, father and immediate family. Almost everyone one of them is and has been poor their whole life and never really took it upon themselves to do anything on their own or out of the ordinary. I think that has helped in a way because it showed me what I didnt want my life to be like.

Thanks for the book recommendation. I`ll have to check it out.

 

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Most of us entrepreneurs have role models in business, separate from the role models we have in our personal lives (like family).  These business role models can be people or companies.  So ask yourself which companies inspire you.  Read about their leaders and a whole new world may open up to you.

Steve`s right, that role models are exactly that---people who have a role in life and society, after whom we would like to model our own life.

I can`t remember the various threads, but in the foums you`ll find a number of topics about "who inspires you," and books to read about business. In those topics you`ll find references to all sorts of folks, from a grandfather to Henry Ford, or to some of the modern-day business gurus.

Having a community like this also helps. You can speak your mind, ask questions, and the people you`re talking with all have gone through or are going through pretty much similar things.

If possible, you may want to look around your particular neighborhood to see if you can find someone a bit older who`s also an entrepreneur. Perhaps they`d be interested in meeting for a soda or coffee one afternoon, to discuss what you can do at your age.

The main thing is to just push your way through the "shyness" and anxiety. When you have physical pain it`s not a good thing to ignore it and press onward. But with false psychology, there`s an old saying that if you act a certain way long enough, eventually you won`t be acting anymore---it`ll be real. :-)

How weird, just today I read an article about "millenials" and the problems they`re causing business, because they come into the workplace never having had to compete for anything. They grew up playing little league that didn`t keep score, they got prizes and accolades just for  showing up, no one really ever had a chance to develop a sense of personal expertise or talent or accomplishment because everyone`s work was always held up as equal whether they`d actually accomplished something or not. Their parents call their employers to complain about their children working overtime or getting poor performance reviews, for heavens sakes.

To the degree that any of this is true for you Peter, Craig`s advice is the best you`ll probably find anywhere. I don`t normally care for Ayn Rand but in your case her perspective could be just the antidote you need.

It saddens me and makes me afraid to think there`s a whole generation of people out there trained to think that achieving their own potential is bad. Who will make decisions? How will anything get done? A couple years ago when I was in college (I started college at age 34, so there was a significant generation gap there), group work was excruciating because no one ever wanted to step up and coordinate anything, and EVERY class REQUIRED group work. Everyone was so afraid of looking bossy or standing out among the group, it was all but impossible to get anyone to even express an opinion about how to move forwaqrd. I really seriously hope that`s not the future of business and government in this country.

—paula

oh ps... the article is here: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/08/60minutes/main3475200.shtml

Paula, you may be interested in a book I`m reading at the moment, published in 1997: "The Fourth Turning." It`s sparked in my mind an entire concept of cyclic versus linear time, progress, and the seeming repetition I notice in history, particularly nowadays.

In a nutshell, it`s about four basic generational "moods," each of which follows the previous like any natural cycle. They each are about 20 years, with the overall process repeating about every 80 years. The Boomers were the "awakening," and after about 50 years comes the "crisis." That`s happening around now.

Fascinating book!

Hey Craig, sorry for delay in response. That book looks pretty fascinating, though I must admit it seems difficult to square the idea of the current crop of public-education products with their cyclical role of "hero." Do the authors talk about that? I see where they`re getting hte time frame for the cycles, but I`m not sure I would necessarily agree with their characterizations of the generational moods... to me, it would make just as much sense to characterize the 60s boomers and their generational forebears not as an "awakening," but as a withdrawal from the real, a "sleepening," very much the opposite of awakening. But, of course it`s impossible to say without having read the book.

Cyclical time is actually my default view of time ever since it "clicked" for me some years ago. I forget that other people think of time as a straight forward line, but really that`s just an optical illusion. It`s like if you get in a plane and fly forward long enough you eventually end up going round and round the earth, but your senses don`t perceive that`s the case. You have to look at the geological features and remember that you`ve seen them before to realize it... which is, in my opinion, just what the authors of that book must have done to come up with their hypothesis.

(Cyclical time also makes all kinds of math-based physics stuff make sense... or rather I guess I should say that at least it did for me a couple years ago when I was doing my chemistries & astronomies in college. Don`t know if you are into science but it`s an interesting exercise to take the concept of cyclical time with you for a re-read of Brief History of Time.)

-paula

Oh Craig, I just remembered... if you like science fiction, Phil Dick has a novel called Martian Time Slip that is a fantastic study of cyclical time vs. linear time. Unfathomable genius, that guy.

-paula