Beware Entrepreneurs! Your Stereotypes Pour Into All YourDecisions, Infecting Them [Article 6]

This article is the sixth in the series of 20 articles by Santosh Sharma.An entrepreneur has to take decisions of different types and occasionally all at the same time. This is a typically tough situation and if your decisions are not objective but dependent on your mood fluctuations and mental compulsions then you and your enterprise are at a risk.

Let’s take a test drive to understand how we knowingly or unknowingly infect our decisions and actions exporting our mental traps, spilling them over into many other decisions.

The situation: You had approached the venture capitalists and they have just rejected your proposal for funding and you have to take many other crucial decisions the same day. Do you take the other decisions objectively or fear and insecurity (of different degrees) automatically pours into your decisions that follow? Let’s reverse the case. If the venture capitalists have just accepted your proposal for funding and you have to take few decisions for situations that follow the same day do you remain objective in your decisions and actions?

It is seen that in both these extremes, entrepreneurs tend to lose their balance and composure and this separates the real successful and tough ones from the fragile entrepreneurs, of course the first situation being tougher than the other. One decision can make or mar the enterprise and therefore we have to dissolve all our mental boxes and stereotypes to actually succeed in the harsh competitive world. We cannot afford to spill one situation on the other. But the mind is very tricky and it exactly does that as we are hooked to our thoughts and emotions. If we are not free from our mental limitations our journey will become bumpy and topsy-turvy.

Intend to be successful but don’t be obsessed with it. In obsession there is craving and in cravings there is negative energy that holds you back. The moment you are obsessed, you have created a trap for yourself and if things don’t go your way you lose yourself in the situation. There is no space to design solutions now. Therefore, it is difficult to bounce back immediately. You have to take the ups and the downs in your stride.

There is a classic case of a gaming company where the founder was so focussed in his objective (focussed intention = obsession - cravings) that even when he didn’t have a rupee in his pocket the situation didn’t touch him and he went on to develop a game that has actually paid him for his entire life. Many of the success stories are very similar.

Didn’t we see it in the fifth version of the IPL, where players won it for their team from nowhere? They kept their nerves. If they missed a ball or lost a wicket, that didn’t show in the next ball. This allowed them the freedom to perform objectively for the next ball. This raises the level of competition (either from the situation or from the competitor). And this is exactly what entrepreneurs should do. They should “dissolve their fears” as the mental slavery is even more dangerous than the physical as it infects whatever they think and do.

Set yourself free. Don’t react. Act. In action you are the master and the mind serves you. In reaction mind is the master and you serve it. What would you prefer your take to be?