Entrepreneurship is an uphill task. It is rough, tough, and full of hiccups. People literally love the idea of being an entrepreneur. But it is difficult to fathom the kind of hard work, lifestyle changes, and great sacrifices that they make to reach to the heights that many of us also want ourselves to see. Why is it so that some people fail and some make a mark in the world of business? Why is it so that some grow and grow while some just turn to dust? The reason is that some entrepreneurs start adopting habits that condition them to become successful while others don’t. They continuously improvise themselves to achieve what they want. Even if they did not do it before, the zeal to become successful, that is the prospective reward, drives them to do it. Adopting good habits is very difficult but if we practice we adopt, right? It becomes effortless. There is a great book by Charles Duhhig on the power of habits. One can always read this book to know how to develop great habits.
Anyways, coming back to habits, research studies suggest that when we keep doing what we do, continuously for 21 days, we make those into habits. Good habits are an essential part of entrepreneurial success. We must have heard or read it all over and over again about what successful entrepreneurs do. We all curiously read the things that they do in their daily lives. I mean, how do they start their day, what do they eat, how much do they eat, do they exercise, do they do yoga, gym, etc., etc. We all who plan of having our own businesses must have made this list about what successful entrepreneurs have said about their daily routines. The list goes like this:
1. Successful entrepreneurs have a fix schedule. They maintain a routine.
2. They are curious.
3. They have an early to bed and early to rise routine.
4. They read books a lot.
5. They do yoga, go to gym to stay healthy and active.
6. They manage time.
7. They are open to changes.
8. They manage their money and focus on their priorities.
9. Track their own progress and learn something daily.
10. And of course, stay ahead.
These are basic things or habits that everyone who wants to become successful must rigorously follow. But above all this, I believe, that there is one very special habit that one should adopt. And that one habit I am talking about is visualizing. The power of positive visualization is an extraordinarily powerful tool. You may have heard about the law of attraction and manifestation, right. We all know that brain is a complex system that is formed of millions of neurons and its network. The job of this neuron system is to filter information, filter information of all sorts, the good and the bad. It does not know any difference between good and bad information. This system allows certain information in your brain and blocks out others. And guess what, we are the master programmers of this filter system. When we start focussing on the negative things, we somewhere tame this system to feed images as evidence to confirm the negative. It may be images from your past or the present, whatever, that may show up as reels, let’s say, reels that show how you are failing in your entrepreneurial endeavor, how you are failing to launch your product, failing in providing your customers satisfaction through your products. And when this happens in your mind, you just drain out all the energy that you could have invested in something productive. But the good part is that you can reprogram this system.
As earlier explained, if you continue positive visualization for 21 days at a stretch, you cultivate it as a habit. Once you start practicing this, your brain starts to spot opportunities. Your brain starts to spot evidence that things are working out, and your brain starts to spot those coincidences. At some point in time, we must have realized that when we focussed on finding out solutions to a problem in hand with closed eyes, we found many ways to solve that. Because we visualized the solutions, we received the solutions. Similarly, if we visualize our business running successfully, earning good revenue, reaping great profits, setting up factories, and faces of our happy customers, we start finding ways to achieve those. Consciously visualize the good things that you want to enfold in your business, mirroring the specific picture that you want to be in. When you visualize it, your brain encodes it as real memory. It changes the filter system. The more you visualize positive things happening in your business, the greater your confidence is going to be to run the business, and the greater confidence you are going to have in your business. And here is the really cool thing about it. It takes only 60 seconds of your day to create that positive image of your business in your mind. Research has proven that simply visualizing positive things actually develops the spirit in your brain that everything is possible and you can do it. This is what is required in entrepreneurship.
I know developing this habit is pretty tough like every other habit. We have conditioned our brains to generally see the less positive aspects. What if, it fails? What if, I fail? So and so. That is why many entrepreneurs fail. Why not try seeing, ‘what if I succeed, how great my life would be, what a huge sum of money I am making every day, how my customer base is growing day by day?’. I probably believe, all successful entrepreneurs must have done this when they started their journey and must be doing this to grow, grow and grow. Musk would have visualized about reusable Falcon 9 rocket, and therefore, it materialized for him. Bezos must have visualized providing A to Z solutions to its customers, and thus, Amazon can offer everything. So budding entrepreneurs, do add this one extra habit to your habit list. Visualizing good things is absolutely free and business and entrepreneurship are about looking for great profits, right!
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entrepreneurial spirit