Business is risky. To be out there working away, be it as an employee or an employer involves dealing with issues around safety and comfort. Our decisions hinge on this. We ask: what is the consequence? What will change? How can I maintain my comfort? How can I make myself safer?
While these questions are understandable because they stem from our survival-worried lizard brain, they are obviously not very beneficial for our development and progression. Safety obsession is not a natural thing, but we have normalized it to a point where most of our lives are about making ourselves feel safe while still taking entrepreneurial risks. A balance act that is not just impossible but emotionally very taxing.
We want to build a legacy, but we don’t want to go on the dark journey of uncertainty that is life. We want to impact people, but we don’t want to run the risk of being hurt by them. We want to fall in love, but we don’t want to have our heart broken. We want a puppy, but we never want it to die. None of these concepts are inherent to life; they deny life.
Work based on such a mindset is a painful affair because it does not push things forward but solidifies this fearful attitude. Painful because while we do such things, our heart clearly craves the freedom that comes with launching oneself into the void.
As long as we keep the false belief alive that life is about being safe and improving upon this safety- the very message most of our parents drilled into our heads- we will not be able to fall into it and fulfill the truth that waits patiently within us to become the source from which we can beautifully create.
As long as we believe our mother’s sincere and well intentioned warnings about the dangers of a difficult world, our protective brain will first seek to find that safety before progressing, and the impossible dance will continue ad infinitum.
To kiss this mother goodbye, to release ourselves from the choke hold of an umbilical cord that has wrapped itself around our neck and that is infesting our work attitude as much as our workplaces, is a duty we have to fulfill for ourselves.
As we fall out of the nest and spread our wings, we will embrace a new kind of guidance: The one that comes from within. The fierce and wild one. Because out there in the open, the only thing that will allow you to enjoy your path is not cautiousness, but a fearless mind that is aligned with a burning heart. When the two are aligned, we become the masters of our thoughts and, as such, the masters of our reality.
Your idols are not your idols because of their achievements and their financial success, but because of their trailblazing, pioneering work. Because they are fearless artists of the self and they are not controlled by a false existential fear they are seeking to balance with their entrepreneurial cravings.
Life is not a compromise. Life is an all-or-nothing affair. You are either an apple tree, or you’re not. So stop being half of something and teach your mind to incrementally step into its natural, initial curiosity and go all in.
