The Trouble With A Comfortable Life

So you get up in the morning after a nice long sleep, take your time getting ready and stroll to work in the morning.  Work is well paid, quite interesting and full of young, vibrant people who all get along well.  The days go quickly and you’re kept busy but not overworked, with slow periods not being long enough to become bored.

Many people would consider the above scenario as a good job.  It pays the bills, keeps you interested and generally allows you to get through the week easily and enjoy your time outside of work.  However, in my opinion there’s a problem with this path:

You will wake up one day in 20 years time and wonder “What have I done with my life?”

What happened to all the hopes and dreams?  Becoming a millionaire and living the highlife or “finding yourself” in some mountain temple in far east asia.  What about taking exciting risks or truly searching for that perfect function for you in life?

When you are following such a comfortable (but not truly fulfilling) life it is very easy to watch the time fly by without you achieving any of your other life goals.  You might be one of the rare people who can make every evening and weekend productive but most people after a week at work want nothing more than to relax and do very little.  This leads to missing out on your true life goals and ambitions.

Personally, I would like to start my own business but my day job keeps getting in the way.  Its a circular problem - I need money to start my own business but earning that money inhibits starting a business.  So much effort is required in the working day, which means very little gets done outside of work.  I certainly don’t want to be asking the highlighted question above but unfortunately the answer to this problem still eludes me…

 

 

Entrepreneur To Be

I often wonder if I have what it takes to become a successful entrepreneur.  Is it enough that I can come up with plenty of ideas for a business?  The answer is obviously, no.  So what sort of qualities does one need to make it as a entrepreneur?  The following are some things I believe you need, there are probably lots more to consider!

Perseverance
“If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again”.  That old quote says it all really, there will be plenty of times where you fail in your entrepreneuristic endeavours but a good entrepreneur will take all he can from the failure and give it another go.

Confidence
If you don’t have full confidence in your own abilities and ideas you are likely to fail.  Confidence in yourself comes from trusting your knowledge and ability, which in itself comes from spending time expanding your knowledge and developing your abilities.  Personal development leads to trust which leads to confidence.  simple really! :)  To have full confidence in your ideas you must know every detail inside out by spending time researching them fully.

Ability to take risks
Sometimes in life you will come across opportunities which may seem too good to be true.  Most of the time they are but every now and then it could be a potential goldmine with the right person willing to take the risk with it.  Aside from these “golden opportunities” just getting out of bed one day and deciding to become an entrepreneur is a great risk in itself and one which most of us don’t take.

Not afraid of hard work
Being an entrepreneur is hard work, plain and simple.  The responsibility is fully on your shoulders and you must be willing to do whatever it takes to become successful.  This is another area I think puts off a lot of people from going into business for themselves.

Creativity
Creativity covers many areas like coming up with original ideas or thinking different ways around common problems.  I don’t think this attribute is as important as the others but it certainly helps.
Like I said, this is just a short list of a few attributes I personally think are important to entrepreneurs.  The good thing is that it doesn’t really matter if you don’t have them all just yet as I believe anyone can learn/develop them with the right amount of effort.