A word of encouragement to all new entrepreneurs…

I always knew that doubts and obstacles would eventually hit me and obstruct my almost seamless journey of changing my career.

So far, everything seemed to go pretty smooth – from taking first steps towards finding out what I want to do with my life to eventually leaving the corporate world after 7 years in it. Particularly when I now listen to my friends, that’s certainly the impression I have given them – ‘it’s all going perfectly well with my new journey’. The reality though looks slightly more imperfect. My journey does have obstacles and right now, I’m in the midst of one of those. This note is intended to offer a word of encouragement to those who can relate.

I suppose the journey of people starting out is unique and yet similar. What we all share is uncertainty (we don’t know where this adventure leads us), a tremendous amount of courage and passion, and perhaps fear in various areas – fear of failure, finances, uncertainty, and so on.

What is unique about us is how we deal with those similarities, depending on our endurance, resilience, optimism, and support structure.

Doubts that are currently occupying my brain are along the lines of “Did I make the right choice by dropping everything I’ve built up so far?”, “Will I ever be able to make a living of what I do?”, “Why would people trust me if there are a million other good coaches out there?”. I’m sure the ‘saboteur’ wording is different for everyone going through this and it’s still reassuring to know that we are sharing something here.

I see this journey like a marathon. The training requires all the skills (endurance, resilience etc) and there are set backs along the way and even days when I don’t want to get up in the first place. On other days I surprise myself how far and fast I manage to run.

I actually run – perhaps this is why I can easily relate to this image. On my run this morning, all of these thoughts crossed my mind as I felt the urge to stop and take a picture of what I see (see below).

It’s a beautiful translation of my mental state right now. Lots of chaotic trees that don’t quite allow me to see through them and yet a beautiful sun spell that gives hope that everything will be just fine.

Training, pushing myself to my limits, getting up despite not wanting to, often leads me to huge gratitude. The sun spell this morning made me stop during my run and I literally couldn’t resist giving it some attention. It allowed me to stop my negative train of thought and focus on the beauty instead. And so my word of encouragement to fellow entrepreneurs is that there is beauty in everything – we just need to take a moment to look for it.