Creative Commons License photo credit: Isaac Bowen
Written by Jay Cowan
“As we know our Self, opportunities are no longer limited by the obvious psychological and institutional factors; rather we become masters of our own domains. We then live at cause, not effect. We become the means to create new opportunities.” – Phillip Dignan in Secrets of the Wealthy Mind
Are these chaotic times built for the Innerpreneur?
Or, am I just used to chaos? The chaos for me has always been the battle between chasing the external world and being myself. Everybody in my world has always referred to me as a Serial Entrepreneur. When I was younger – I liked the term. As I got older it seemed like people were saying I hadn’t figured out who I was yet.
I’m not an Entrepreneur. For me, the word Entrepreneur refers to building something external and that just isn’t what I’m about. My business endeavors have always been more of a reflection of what journey I was on at the time.
The journey nowadays is thru choppy waters – or are they? Conventional wisdom would say that starting a business is best in good economic times. I don’t know.
Competing with the false premise of how good things are out there is a challenge for a lot of start-ups. When things seem good out there, start-ups do what many people do. They compare their insides with the world’s outsides. They say “Why is it always harder for us? Why don’t we have a cool flat-screen in our conference room?” My own experience says it isn’t harder – it is just different…and money is seldom the answer….even though it can be an answer.
Money makes happy people happier and unhappy people unhappier
Same for business. Money also can make you less creative.
But when the world around us stops looking so good…interesting things happen internally. Things that are outside our self don’t look that much different anymore and the future is less of a given for everybody.
While the future for many is a depressing idea, I am finding that things don’t feel any different. I have had to learn to deal with fear and uncertainty as one of the prices of my journey. The only difference now is that I am not the only one at the table that is concerned about tomorrow.
What I am also discovering is that many people are now open to listening to not just new ideas about how to do things, but in new ideas of how to view (or frame) things.
When times were good, many took safer and less risky paths. Today, the mood is shifting and it seems like people are just happy to have a home – no matter how chaotic it may be.
So, as the world around us fears tomorrow, we can embrace who we are and learn to express that which got us here – our inner drive to simply create.
For me the last few months have provided me a space to ask myself and those with me – what are we really creating here? And how is what we are doing a reflection of who we are? – both as a company and as individuals.
What we have discovered is that really there is no company expression. What we end up with at the end of the day is that our company is reflected in the marketplace as a collective expression of each one of us involved.
How empowering is that? (both from the individual or company view point!).
While our environments are always a reflection of who we are – it is becoming clear that (as innerpreneurs) we can and will have a collective say as to where we go from here and how we get there. And who can beat that!
The world is waiting…..peace
