What 90% of people fail to do

Markus Hafellner
2 min readJan 16, 2016

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This post appeared first on the Backpack Consulting Blog.

People are designed to follow, thus ‘not to follow’ requires breaking a habit. Stopping to consume and starting to create is the most fearful thought for many.

Yet, so many people want to be the next great entrepreneur and do this, do that, become famous, become rich — long story short: want to be somebody different.

The irony is how people try to start creating by consuming. Yes you, my dear reader, how many blog posts about ‘Being like Steve Jobs’ and ‘How to create a million dollar app’ have you already read? Have you ever written a blog post yourself? Have you ever started writing an actual app? Have you ever actually started a business in your desire to become like Steve Jobs?

Usually the answers to these four questions are: hundreds, no, no, no.

How come children know exactly if they want to walk someday, they have to try with steps, fail, and improve and yet most adults fail to either take the first steps, or give up because they fell a couple of times after 10 tries.

“Failure is the new Success”

A dangerous conclusion which is heavily spread in start-up environments all over the world is to think what makes you an outstanding creator is failing numerous time.

No, that’s not the point I want to make. If you are blessed and know how to walk the first time you try, don’t fall on purpose. But if you are reading 90 books about how to walk before taking the first step, you already failed.

Consistency is not everything

What is key here is that what you want to achieve is something you are sure you actually CAN achieve.

Staying with the example how to walk. Kids know they CAN achieve walking because they know others have done it. They also know they CAN NOT fly because they have never seen anybody fly. So even trying it 100 times will only hurt you and you should probably learn after the 10th time failing that flying is just not for you.

To clarify things, this does not mean you can never do anything nobody has done before, it just means start with the things you know are possible, because others do it every day, and go from there.

If you enjoyed this post, please recommend it so that more people can gain from it!

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Markus Hafellner

Product & Project Manager at Firstbird, Entrepreneur and Traveller