And so it goes... Resilience and Entrepreneurship

I really like to read. In first grade I could not read, which really isn’t the point to this story. I always wished that I could read and still wish that I could. But those wishes are for two different things, one for time, one for ability.

In my limited reading, bound by the endless task list I have in front of me and my borderline debilitating ability to become distracted, I read stoic philosophy.

The stoics have it right. Them and the Buddhists. Sorry, not sorry.

In Stoicism, as I understand it, any feeling that we have is of our own making. Our circumstance is irrelevant because we always have a choice in how we act. How we interpret. How we see the world. Its true freedom.

But I said I read Stoic philosophy, I am not a Stoic.

So yesterday, when so many things seemed to be going wrong in my company, I was by no means a centered Stoic. I was pissed. I was stressed.

Basically, we work with a contract manufacturer that is not treating us as if they had been hired for something. Rather, it feels like we work for them in some bizarre twist of fate.

Regardless, I was doing that thing, you know when you get really frantic and do a million things all in the fog of ire, look up and then its evening. Then when people don’t return your late night emails you get even more mad. And spend the whole night with your kids refreshing your email, waiting for a friggin answer.

Well, that’s how it goes.

I have heard before that most things are simple, but not easy. I think business is that way. Though people much more “successful” than me have begged to differ.

But, in my estimate, business is simple. Make something, offer something, someone pays, you make money. It is simple. But not easy.

And maybe one of the hardest things, is resilience.

Because things will go wrong. You will lose deals. You will lose money. You will lose time, sleep, peace, maybe a couple of years, constantly your socks.

So the question becomes can you be resilient enough?

The Stoics figured it out. Circumstance. Its irrelevant. We are doomed to be free, as the Existentialist would say (sorry I got a philosophy degree, just flexin a little). And because we are so free, we get to choose how every circumstance affects us, how we react, and what we do with it.

May just be the crux of entrepreneurship. Resilience.