The Power of Negative Thinking
I have failed miserably in 3 out of 7 businesses I bootstrapped since 2005.
Failures teaches lessons. I too learned some things the hard way. I realized that I had been insanely bullish and gung-ho about myself and those businesses , primarily due to :
- Reading too many books on winning and positive thinking.
- Spending lot of time listening to motivational speakers.
- Being fascinated by advice like "follow your dreams, rest will follow" from wonderful optimistic people.
- Watching too many videos of spiritual gurus on Youtube about finding passion(s) and peace in life.
It now seems undeniable to me that overdose of above so-called "life-transforming" content was lethal. It blinds one from foreseeable business risks creating a lens of disillusioned positivity. You think that your "thoughts and feelings" instruct the universe to get you whatever the damn you want and that only good is gonna happen with you. You tend to be repulsive to anyone who could harm your enthusiasm to succeed in life.
The real scenario in any business is unfortunately quite different. As an entrepreneur, you may have to:
1. Wake up everyday with the fear that one wrong decision can get you out of business.This fear shall push you out of bed every morning and motivate you to work diligently to take well-thought out decisions all day.
2. Spend less time with mentors who only speak positive about your business domain. Network frequently with those who can tell you genuine problems that can fail you. Be concerned about these problems, discuss with team and make contingency plans. Don't under-estimate the importance of devil advocates.
3. Try to reinvent yourself everyday by self- questioning- What's wrong? Can we do better?Have an un-named suggestion box for employees to facilitate punching their unbiased suggestions on your face. Breed an environment of constructive criticism and allow all negative thoughts among your employees reach you.
In short , embrace the fact that doing business is not going to be a cakewalk.Abuse from unpaid creditors , delayed payments from customers , product rejections, competitor grabbing your pie unfairly, tax notices, strikes , violence etc. are all part of the game. No pep-talk is ever going to help solve them.
Accept, that negativity and unpleasant situations ,day-in and day-out , are the most effective stepping stones to success.Unleash the power of negativity to help build your business brick by brick.
I help integrate LEAN practices from Toyota's Production System into your business. Offering private, confidential LEAN consultations to boost profits by 6% through tailored LEAN Culture Elements.
4 年Liked it.
Freelancer
4 年My 2 cents on this : 1) When we focus on building on our strengths, it becomes easier to navigate through and improve upon our weaknesses also 2) Risk assessment and management should always be a part of running a business Looking at things this way sounds more positive also ??
Scale and Build Organizations | Mentor for start-ups
4 年This is stoic thinking. Epicteus, a stoic thinker said?“Set before your eyes every day death and exile and everything else that looks terrible,” he said, “especially death. Then you will never have any mean thought or be too keen on anything.” You will also never be disappointed, you will never have your illusions shattered or your expectations gone unmet.?
Owner @ Blueside Photonics Ltd: I design and develop tuneable spectrum LED lighting systems and offer training and software solutions in photonics, optics, laser and LED safety.
5 年Really strong thoughts - the negative feedback is an important one to balance.? There are people out there who for some reason love to adopt a negative approach (I call them 'negative experts') - they just love to point out all the ways it won't work.? The secret is to use them but try not to take their criticism to heart.? Fair minded criticism from people whom you know well and get on with is usually very useful especially when you request it from them.? When running a critical project I might deliberately run a 'negative expert' session where we all pretend to be negative experts - done correctly its really worthwhile because everyone is in the correct 'spirit' for that session.? I was once working with power line engineers who tended to keep their thoughts to themselves - I said: "in six months time you've just heard that this product failed badly - what immediate thoughts run through your mind...." ?? Straight away they poured out all the thoughts they had which they had not yet relayed, but only because they were prompted to do so:? I identified several things that actually needed urgent attention. ?
Instinctively Curious & Curiously Instinctive ????
5 年Makes for a very interesting read Gaurav and a lot of take aways... Thank you for sharing ???? A coin always has two side and how often tend to get stuck on one...