How to overcome fears when starting your own project

Becoming an entrepreneur is not easy, and when it comes to taking the big leap we are faced with lots of typical fears and insecurities. As an entrepreneur and mentor of entrepreneurs, I am going to tell you the secrets that I have learned throughout these years.

Fear of economic instability

Probably, the fear The most common when starting a business is the fear of not being able to stabilize income and not being able to “sustain” the lifestyle that we want now that we are undertaking. I have seen it hundreds of times, I hear it constantly, and I can tell you that it is normal, while it can be transcended.

Basically, a change in our way of thinking has to happen, in our mentality or mindset: a shift from the mindset of employee to that of entrepreneur (or better yet, entrepreneur). While the employee usually bases his security on the check he receives at the end of the month, the entrepreneur must learn to base his security on his own internal qualities and capabilities. For this, we must continuously work on the development of our security,

self-esteem, self-confidence, resilience, among other crucial factors. Difficult? Yeah. Impossible? Not at all. And the reward? Enormous.

In addition, we must understand that when we work for a company, it acts as a "filter" of external reality and its conditions. It is like a veil that allows the employee to ignore, at least partially, the financial reality of the organization to which he belongs: did the company have a good month of sales? A bad month? Is there a national, global, or industry-specific crisis? Many of these issues go unnoticed by the employee, but not by the entrepreneur or business owner.

So, if we want to have a guaranteed "floor" of income, it is necessary to understand that as entrepreneurs we will have to grow several levels above that threshold so that the average income, of an oscillating nature, remains higher than our "acceptable minimum".

• Related article: "Resilience: definition and 10 habits to enhance it"

The fear of losing freedom

In my courses for first-time entrepreneurs, this other fear, so common, of being imprisoned by all the tasks of the own business and thus lose the freedom that, usually and for many, had been one of the main engines of change at a national level. labor.

The truth is that yes, many times when we start to undertake, we are like the man or the woman orchestra. We do everything, everything. But it is also true that if we want to grow we will have to learn to systematize, delegate and supervise. Create structures that work for us. with the help of some mentor that guides us, we can speed up this process and finally access that freedom of time and resources that we dream of when we think of starting a business in the first instance.

After all, taking the step to undertake is deciding to remove the ceiling that we had imposed as a ceiling for our salary, to open ourselves to a reality without limits in which we ourselves can determine how far we want to arrive. The key here is to develop our strategic thinking to make our time worth more and more: we have to learn to do more with less, or as I usually say: build machinery (companies) to add value to the world while we sleep.

• You may be interested in: "Personal Development: 5 reasons for self-reflection"

The fear of responsibility

After all, when we have a company we offer a product or service to the world, that is to say, to our clients, and we make commitments with them for which they pay us monetarily. A little later we began to need help to grow, we hired our first employees and again the responsibility grows. Then the fears of taking charge of all that begin to appear, and if we will be able, if we really have "entrepreneurial wood".

Again, it is a recurring theme in my master's program for entrepreneurs. The truth is that undertaking is going to put us face to face with ourselves and with how much we really want to do what we do. what we are doing, as well as what we are doing it for and who we are helping with our product or service. For this reason, it is all the easier to undertake as a result of personal purpose, because it is a point to which we can return to give meaning to what we do and overcome the difficulties of the process. Startups with a clear mission go further and accept greater responsibilities.

In addition, undertaking is fabulous to develop our internal capacities. Yes, at first it may feel like a process of increased responsibility, but in the end: isn't that how we grow? In my work as a coach I see it constantly. As we mature, we are able to take on greater responsibilities, sustain with greater ease, and choose our commitments better. Undertaking is a beautiful training for it.

• Related article: "Self-actualization needs: what are they, according to Maslow?"

Conclusion: destined to undertake

Finally, I would like to share with you a reflection that I usually do with my students, when I tell them that "we are all destined to undertake." Although I understand that not everyone will end up being an entrepreneur (in fact, only a small percentage will) I say it because it really is. I believe: in my own experience and that of others that I have been able to mentor, I have seen that the moment to undertake comes when from within our press a desire capable of offering the world something different, different, something that represents us more intimately, and it almost never happens that the current company in which we find ourselves is the right medium or superstructure for it.

I mean that, philosophically speaking, we are all called to discover our own structure, one that represents us to contribute our intrinsic value to the world. And that... that is precisely our own company: a platform to contribute, to give. Quoting the famous Khalil Gibran: “work is love made visible”.