The past couple of weeks have been a phenomenal experience for me. For the first time in my life I confronted the question “What if I fail?”. For anyone other than me, it would be a very vague question. But for me its pretty straight forward – “Not being able to fulfill on the goals that I have listed down in my dream list”. I am a dreamer. I think big. I BELIEVE that we are here to shine, to experience everything that the world has to offer. I don’t want to live a life of wants. I want to be a creator, a creator of something from nothing, a creator of my destiny.
These 2 weeks, I have come to understand why my loved ones are so concerned about what I am doing. [Quit my job, tried my hand at many things for a while, working on a startup from which I am evidently not making any money]. Seriously, I have gotten their concern.
Until now, I was so damn sure of myself that I never even once considered “Not being able to accomplish my dreams”. I have been courageous enough to actually unabashedly share them with whoever I click with.
But these past few days, I have confronted a lot of stuff. I won’t go overboard by calling them “harsh realities”, but they definitely made me feel so miserable that I didn’t feel like eating food for days and escaping from everything that I am doing. All my responsibilities (most of them). And sleeping it out to avoid facing the truth.
Well there is no real truth, only perspectives. But the perspective that I was choosing to push under the carpet was:-
Its been 11 months since I have quit my job and I have only earned some 40K Rs so far. I have borrowed money and asked my dad to help out on multiple occasions. And even right now, I have no assured form of income.
In my perspective, I was doing great.
I got multiple job offers (one of them payed me more than 2times my previous salary), 3 people approached me to start a startup with them, I got ownership of a startup even though I didn’t have the capital to invest on the same, I almost certainly got business contracts worth a couple of crores etc etc.
You know there are times when you work hard for something with only 1 fuel, “belief”. When these kinda things fail, then you feel real low. You question yourself and your abilities. It becomes all the more tough when there are people waiting to catch hold of you and tell you how foolish you have been for not taking their advice earlier. Its this kind of a feeling that I went through and seriously considered QUITING as an entrepreneur. Taking up a job – probably one that would earn me some respect in the eyes of those who measure your success by your “Compensation Package”, probably do an MBA from an IIM and earn big bucks, clear myself of my financial liabilities and then become an entrepreneur again. This would take a few years at least.
But no baby no, I ain’t quiting. I went through the dumps. I understood how people feel when they say “Whats wrong with you”. (Its just their way of expressing, I love you, I am concerned about you) And I appreciate the fact that I realized all this.
Entrepreneurship is a game of creating wealth doing something that you are passionate about. And I am here to play this game and win it. I swear, in 5 years time, I am gonna have the skills to be able to create wealth and freedom anywhere, anytime.
Here is a video that I absolutely loved. It invoked in me the spirit to do whatever it takes to accomplish what I want. To give it the best of what I have got!
I am sure I’d come back years later and read it and smile again.
Today was a harsh day! Every single thing I tried to earn out of my hobbies – failed. Or rather I did not give my heart and soul to achieving success. I firmly believe in the fact that, we create our destinies and everything that looks ambitious initially, becomes downright practical if you focus your attention and energy into making it happen.
However, I am not that great at FOCUSing yet! In fact I have realized that “Lack of focus” is my biggest impediment to success.
May is about to come and I don’t have the resources to last it. In the midst of a heartache, I chose to pick up a job again. I’ll give my final burst to earning from my hobbies till 15th of May, and if I am still broke, I’ll pick up a job.
This journey has not ended yet, so I will not jot down everything that I have learned from it. But I do wanna acknowledge the tremendous amount of good that it has done to my psyche. Man, I am so glad that I got this chance to experience life and do all the wacky things that I have done in the past 4 months.
I have discovered several mental blocks, attitudes and fixed ways of being that stop me in life! I have also realized that getting a job and sticking to it is the easiest thing one can do in life. But thats a sure shot way to mediocrity as well. I quit my job to live a life I love, and being in the rat race is actually 1/(Living a Life I Love). But none the less! There is something called Stomach as well
Freak yar! I am not turning so negative!
I’ll fucking make my way out of this negativity business.
I declare – By May 15th I would be having 10,000 bucks in my Bank Account. Earned by me without writing any code.
I have been failing so often that I don’t feel bad at failing anymore. And the best thing is, the lesser worse I feel the more I am able to learn from my failure.
So I was not able to make any money still. Did quite some stuff but nothing worked.
So I asked Deepu to pay for my bills. She is my ex, and with her its not like I am borrowing money. With her its like family. My money her money and same way around. So I still don’t feel like I have borrowed.
So what have I learned from this failure. — [ It looks like I am not putting my heart and soul ]– . We always win the games we play. And if I am not earning money then I am playing the game of not earning money.
So how do I transform this area? Possibility of creating 150$. I’ll go all out on creating this thing.
Meanwhile I put up an existence system today. http://www.rememberthemilk.com
Its a good one. And I wanna build a good relationship with this fella! As in what I write in the organizer, I end up doing as well!
I had a crunch time today financially. I gotta pay my bills and I don’t have the money. All the guys I had lent money to, are unable to pay me right now. In the background of these conversations I was glad that they couldn’t pay me back. This way I have an opportunity to utilize my dormant potential of creating money!
Then came idea no 4 – “Handwriting Analysis for free and for a fee”. Since I am already working with handwriting analysis, I thought I gotta make money with this only. It would be a good motivation for me to learn more on the subject. I decided to place “Drop your handwriting Here” boxes in some of the retail shops near my house (after talking to their owners of course) and place 100 posters all over my layout. But somehow I just kept hovering around the shops and didn’t speak to anyone. The shops were so congested that no one had any chance to write properly. Then I saw a big big mall. I thought of approaching the manager of the mall, but a weird feeling of fear gripped me. A fear of rejection I guess. So I didn’t go inside the mall and came home instead. After coming home I spoke to Mamta and she cleared my mind out. Then I went again. Man it took me a 5 minute talk to get a ‘yes’. I have so much of practice of getting a ‘yes’ with the registration conversations taught in SELP . This is one more added to the list.
So the point boils down to “how to overcome your fear?”. Well whatever fear we have is inauthentic 99% of the time. In my case I was afraid of the rejection that existed nowhere but in my imagination. How authentic is that??? So whenever you have a fear, ask your self.. “is my imagination playing the game or is it reality?”. If it is imagination then just chuck it off and go ahead and do whatever is needed. Chances are you might fail, but failing is much better than not trying. Its like playing a game and loosing rather than not turning in the field itself.
Overcoming this fear has been an important breakthrough for me! Thanks Mamta.
. This is one more added to the list.