Photo courtesy of Eric and Flickr
“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.”
– Chinese proverb.
(This article is an excerpt from my book RESULTS: Think Less, Achieve More that recently appeared in Start Your Business Magazine)
We live at an extraordinary time in history. There’s never been more opportunity to start and grow your business, and there’s never been more information about what to do and how to do it. So why is it that people so often feel stuck or overwhelmed? And how can you find the “needle” of value in the staggering “haystack” of information we’re each bombarded with?
You were born an entrepreneur
Each person is born with “entrepreneurial instincts”, the qualities that drive the creative process. While not everyone cultivates and develops these instincts, they’re there in each of us. Think about it: What first sparked your interest in starting your business? While some people are showing obvious signs of business acumen in their teens or earlier, for many people that impulse to start your own venture arrives as a sudden flash of insight; a glimpse of something you’d love to create, accompanied by a sense of freedom and possibility. It turns out that your capacity for insight is one of the innate capacities you were born with. Not only that; it’s also the key to igniting the rest of your entrepreneurial instincts, as you’ll see in this excerpt from my book RESULTS: Think Less, Achieve More (John Wiley & Sons Ltd, © 2016 Jamie Smart)
Realization is a natural function of your mind
You’ve had countless realizations and insights over the years; ‘hits’ of fresh new thinking that have aligned your embodied understanding of life more closely with reality. If you’d like a simple metaphor for this, look at the FedEx logo. A white spoon (poetically concealed in the letter ‘e’ in the word ‘Fed’) and a white arrow (hidden between the ‘E’ and the ‘x’ in the word ‘Ex’). These two images have always been part of the ‘reality’ of the logo. You may have looked at them hundreds or even thousands of times. You may not have noticed them until now, but they’ve always been there. The mechanism that takes you from ‘looking’ to ‘seeing’ is realization; a hit of fresh new perception that arrives from beyond your existing model of reality. And once you’ve seen them, you’ll never be able to un-see them. Your realization will have brought your understanding more closely into alignment with reality. Every time you see the FedEx logo from now on, you’re going to be reminded of your built-in capacity for realization, of the principles we’re exploring in this book, and your innate ability to get results.
You possess superpowers
Your innate capacity for realization is one of a number of ‘super- powers’ you possess; the deep drivers you benefited from as you learned to walk. Take a moment to imagine you’re looking out at the world through the eyes of a toddler…
· Your innate capacity for direction shows you a purpose and possibility that inspire and motivate you.
· Your innate capacity for resilience enables you to take risks, recover and get back up every time you fall over.
· Your innate capacity for creativity has you innovating different approaches and creating solutions to problems.
· Your innate capacity for authenticity means you trust yourself and stay true to your authentic desires.
· Your innate capacity for intuition lets you know when to practice, when to rest and when to try something different.
· Your innate capacity for presence keeps you close to reality; aware, insightful and learning rapidly.
· Your innate capacity for connection allows you to be playful and loving, secure in yourself and your world.
· Your innate capacity for clarity lets you play full-out, clear-minded and at the very edge of your abilities.
These innate qualities are the core of your entrepreneurial instincts. Who are some of the entrepreneurs you admire? The “super-powers” listed above are the deep-drivers behind their success. As you start igniting your own entrepreneurial instincts, you’re going to find yourself taking the steps you need to make progress and grow your business.
You can learn more about how to wake up to ignite your entrepreneurial instincts and awaken your innate “super-powers” by downloading the first 2 chapters of RESULTS for free at www.JamieSmart.com/instantresults or by listening to them on audio here: https://www.jamiesmart.com/rmp08/