Lesson 3: The victim days are over

Entrepreneurship makes you a person who takes 100% responsibility for their life

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Ever seen a founder point fingers and blame others when their startup is not doing well? Me neither. It’s your startup and it’s all up to you. If your team members are not doing their job, you’ve either hired or managed badly. If people don’t understand or adopt your product, you need to improve it or build something people really need. If you’re not getting enough engagement on social media, you’ve got to make your content more engaging.

One of the things I love most about entrepreneurship is that it gives you the opportunity to profoundly understand that you either allow or create everything you experience. It teaches you to give up all your excuses, forever. And that might be the most valuable skill you learn for life.

Growing up, most of us have been conditioned to blame all sorts of things outside of ourselves, like the government, our bosses, clients, coworkers, parents, the media, the weather, the economy, and so on. Doing that is easy, convenient, and momentarily takes the weight off your shoulders. However, it massively disempowers you and keeps you in delusion in the long run. The truth is, you can always take action, course-correct, adapt to the circumstances or react differently.

The funny thing about our victim stories is that they represent our comfort zone. And we all know that’s not where growth takes place. It’s not where success lies either.

In pursuit to build a successful startup, you inevitably leave your comfort zone. Countless times. Not just by taking this risky path to begin with, but also by having to manage multiple new areas you have no idea of, learning by doing, and facing constant challenges, hurdles, setbacks, and all sorts of twists and turns you can’t foresee.

At some point, being outside your comfort zone becomes your new comfort zone. You get used to not knowing and it doesn’t stop you or make you feel incapable any longer. You’ve learned that you can figure it all out. Either by googling, asking around, or classic trial and error.

Once you get into the habit of working things out, you’ve developed a solution-focused mindset and have left the “Ain’t it Awful” Club for good. You realize that you’ve always had the power to produce your desired results. With this new awareness, you start paying closer attention to what you’re doing, focusing on and ignoring. You also start collecting more and more feedback, in order to continue expanding your awareness.

Now, whenever things don’t go as planned, you don’t waste time complaining or ruminating. Your unwavering focus on finding solutions kicks in and asks questions such as:

How did I create or allow this to happen?

What am I doing that’s not working?

How can I fix this?

What am I not doing that I need to try on to see if it works?

You learn to iterate, pivot, fail better, and improve faster, all while expanding your horizon and capabilities. This process redefines the common concept of failure and helps foster a growth mindset. Setbacks become opportunities to learn and improve, and each one can be a stepping stone toward success when you focus on gaining insights from it. In fact, startups are all about learning. If you don’t learn new things every day, you’re doing it wrong.

I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.

—Michael Jordan

The sense of ownership you develop as a founder pushes you to take control of your life in general. It leaves no room for giving your power away to other people or external factors.

Knowing that your experiences are the result of your conscious and unconscious choices, you try to make more conscious ones. You try to choose what you think, as it determines how you feel, and how you feel directs your actions and reactions.

What you read, watch, or listen to, who you hang out with, and everything that goes into your mind influences your thoughts and feelings. The more you look for them, the more tools and levers you find to steer things in the direction you want them to go, whether it is a conversation with a team member, a sales call, or your own emotions. Once you step into your power of taking 100% responsibility, your whole life can be yours.

This post is part of the series “100 things I learned by becoming an entrepreneur” that I launched to reflect on my founder journey, nudge fellow founders to appreciate their own progress, and inspire more women to make the leap to entrepreneurship. Subscribe to get all hard-earned lessons featuring helpful tips & tools delivered to your inbox as soon as I hit publish ???