Your Plans Are Going To Fail, And That’s Okay

But How Do You Recover And Get Back Up?

I have been riding a wave of delusional optimism when it comes to building my one-person business.

And yesterday was the first day I got a real reality check.

I think that delusional optimism is incredibly important when it comes to the entrepreneurial journey.

Because if we were always rational and always going by the stats and the statistics for the likelihood of our success.

Then there is a high probability that we will never start at all.

Because the stats usually say:

“It’s going to be a pain in the ass, you’re going to fail and lose a lot of money, and get kicked in the nuts relentlessly.”

So having delusional optimism and playing the archetype of the fool (an idiot who is willing to jump off a cliff for shits and giggles) — is incredibly important to just fucking start.

But What Do You Do When Reality Hits And You Realize It’s Not Going To Be Easy At All?

This has been my most recent sticking point.

In building my one-person business I have put a lot of weight and faith in LinkedIn to find clients and sell my offer.

But I have never actually looked at LinkedIn, until now…

And what I saw is a highly competitive, highly professional space that IS NOT going to be a walk in the park at all.

This hit me like a bag of bricks dropped from a third-story building.

Triggering all my imposter syndrome, self-doubt, and questions around “How the fuck am I going to make this happen”.

And honestly… That’s okay, and I embrace it.

I embrace it because I am willing to be wrong.

My initial plan was wrong, simply as that.

See being wrong is an incredibly difficult thing to do, it’s actually fucking painful.

Our identities are intertwined with our beliefs and our certainty about life.

And to be wrong about something is a direct threat to our sense of self, and certainty about our life.

So we shy away from being wrong, we are scared to be wrong because being wrong about things creates little mini-ego deaths and gaps in our sense of self.

And ultimately, our certainty about our life.

However, if we are unwilling to be wrong about things, we are also unwilling to grow.

Because energy is neither created nor destroyed, only transformed.

So when we are wrong about something, and a little part of us dies — and we go “Oh fuck, I didn’t see that coming”.

It’s not an opportunity to bitch and moan and latch onto our sense of self, and certainty.

But rather an opportunity to take one step back in order to take two steps forward.

So building a business on LinkedIn is going to be far more difficult than anticipated, and I am going to need to hold myself to a much higher standard.

But honestly…

I’m fucking excited.

I’m excited because there is even more opportunity than I initially anticipated.

Yes, I am going to have to revamp my business model a little bit and take a couple of bites of humble pie.

Let a couple of my fears and limited beliefs die.

But my oh my the opportunity is fucking sky high.

I write this because entrepreneurship is more than just learning a couple of business models and applying a few strategies.

At the end of the day, we are human and are living something called life.

And business IS NOT separate from our life, rather, it is our life.

So the more we nurture and respect our day-by-day experience and not hold our happiness hostage to the future.

The more we can be happy now, and tap into our unique intelligence.

And who knows, we may just become successful by doing so.

Thank you to Boysie Gordon for inspiring me to write a radical piece of content.

If you haven’t already checked out his piece on creating radical content, check it out here.