How to deal with "feeling lost" as entrepreneurs
Being an entrepreneur is not about always busy doing things.
I believe every entrepreneur feel the same at some point in their journey. It is easy to feel lost when you can't figure out some of the most important question. You asked yourself a thousand times of the same question in your mind but the answer is just not clear to you. We all feel lost at that point. Sometimes it gets so desperate that people wanted to give up.
But I think being lost is a part of entrepreneurship. The movies doesn't really show this part. Mark seems to get everything figured out overnight in Social Network, but who knows how much time he spent in thinking what Facebook should be?
Don't be discouraged by that, and I think the best way to not get discourage by that is to join a community for community builders. To find a community where people support each other.
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Time spent inside your head usually looks one of two ways: high highs, or low lows.
Both are equally bad places when it comes to business and entrepreneurship.
My favorite way to deal with feelings that are going on inside your head is to spend time inside your customers' heads instead.
It's the most productive distraction you can give yourself :)
wow, i have never try that before. It sounds kinda cool man. But even u distract urself, you still come to a burn out point sometimes. But I love the idea, I will definitely give it a try RIGHT NOW haha. (today is my lost day)
Glad it resonated.
Burnout happens. You have to give yourself space to recover. ❤️
But burnout isn't just a bad day it's the result of compounding bad days.
You can avoid getting there - and turn around a day where your self talk is trash - by focusing on understanding and helping someone other than yourself.
I love ur twitter content man, i just commented on ur pinned post. I just started my twitter. trying to make it from 0-100
That's gold man! helping others instead focusing on yourself is a great way. i agree. it really helps.
Sometimes I just watch movies lol when it gets too bad. Forget about it for a while, carry on next day.
When we ask ourselves a question thousands of times and still feel lost, it is because we are stressing too much on the logic side and taking the question too seriously. Our brain is wired to find problems and less interested in focusing on the solutions.
For example - Let's say you are stressing on "How do I get my first 100 clients when nothing is working in my favor?". If you take such questions seriously and with logic, you will be stressed because the answers will always be "Don't do blogs they don't work anymore", "You can't tweet better than anyone", "Forget Quora, only experts write there" etc. etc.
But do two things before you sink in the lost feeling (a) Don't take the questions seriously. (b) Now focus more on solutions without any boundaries.
When logic enters you feel blocked because the options are limited. But when creativity enter you open up and move ahead.
Kill logic for time being and sound weird. It is Ok.
Gradually you will move towards the right path.
Hey! that is good advice, I haven't really tested it out, but I do agree with being more creative with solutions. A lot of times we are limited bc we only see the solutions that ppl have tried. Creativity is very important!
Entrepreneurs are creators. And to be a creator you need to be CREATIVE! Am glad I was able to contribute. All the best!
Whenever I feel lost I accept it and realize that I will soon figure it out as I always did before. The path towards your goal is never a straight ascending line, it's a wavy line with ups and downs.
I cant agree more! even when times that I cant figure it out "soon". It's not gonna be all straight ascending line, its important to take the downs as we take the ups. love ur comment!
Write your ideas down on paper, come back to them later, sit down with a friend that loves brainstorming, change it a little, identify modern-day problems, figure a solution... works 99% of the time
hey @carlosw, List out ideas definatly helps. but it does require some friends who are good at it. that is why i think get connect with a group of people who does that is so important!
I'm more than happy to do that with you. Usually, it's always best to explore these options with friends face to face. Where do you live?
Also, get a whiteboard!! The best thing you'll do!
I would love to do that man, sadly I am long way from London hahah..
But I am throwing together a community for community builders/ entrepreneurs on my website.
btw what are u working on rn?
I'm currently working for a group of tech companies, but we are launching a new cloud platform! It's very exciting. How about we arrange a call/chat.
yeah man let's talk, I just followed u on twitter. I can't find ur email on ur profile. Shoot me an email or twitter messager man, we can set it up from there. You can find both on my profile.
excited!
Hey buddy sorry I havent replied, I had been away focusing on many personal matters, lets pick up where we left off.
carlos@anqlave.co lets start an email thread
how s ur biz going?
It's going, tedious but its going, also challanges we havent even launched yet, I let me team focus until I was ready to come back to work. So I'm putting the pressure on them. How are things with you whats going on at your end?
man its a long process man. I ju be patient
Please check out www.calmAscent.com and let me know your thoughts. Thanks!
Wow it looks kinda cool. It’s a mindfulness app but for entrepreneurs? Is it better than headspace?
Thanks! Yes it's a mindfulness app for busy people that want to reap the benefits of mindfulness. The app delivers 5 minute "nuggets" to you every day on your feed which are bite-sized mindfulness/self-care content pieces and exercises. I hope you enjoy the app. It's totally free for download.
dude im totally gonna dl it. im just a very willing to try type person lol,. can u tell me what problem are you trying to solve with your app?
There are a lot of mindfulness and meditation apps out there mostly in the camp of audio, guided meditations. We went the way of building a daily feed of bite-sized content that you can consume in less than 5 minutes a day. No audio, just solid, short, actionable content to help you reduce stress and improve focus and productivity.
do u think a lot of ppl are having this problem? because I meditate with headspace, and they have less than 5 mins a day content. and I like the audio. Not trying to put u down here, and I might be wrong since I can't represent everyone. Did u do a lot of intervirews and identified problems?
A few things:
WRITE IT OUT: I'm in the process of bringing on a co-founder and was freaking out the other night about choosing one. Then I just started writing down all of my thoughts in my notebook. The next day, I literally spoke to myself with an Apple note open and the mic writing down my thoughts. Getting it out of my brain helped me realize the decision was simpler than I was making it.
ASK FOR ADVICE: Whatever you are going through, someone else has 99.999% gone through too. Ask a mentor, a community (like you did), or a friend. Sometimes they don't even have anything insightful to say but talking it out with them might help.
PLAN EVERYTHING: I spend every Sunday setting priorities for the week and every weeknight scheduling the next day. I look at my to-do list/ClickUp and think "what one thing is most important to get done?". Then I schedule the time for it. If I go into a day without a schedule, it's easy to get lost on a tangent since I didn't intentionally set my direction. Scheduling tasks prevents that.
Overall, being an entrepreneur is the hardest thing you can do but also the most rewarding. Always keep your main motivation top of mind and keep pushing until you make it!
Also feel free to message me on Twitter or LinkedIn if you want a fellow entrepreneur to talk to.
Hey Rod,
Thank you for your awesome comment and advice here man!
I very much agree with you here. especially the first two points. I think writing it out helps me a lot. I write stuff out and delete them sometimes lol.
In my experiences, this lost feeling often happens in the reflection process. asking the hard questions. That is really hard, I think it has little to do with scaduling. Sometiems, hard questions take time. And I think it is necessary in a way.
Btw I followed u on Twitter. I just started my twitter lol. still learning about it. would be great if ppl give some advices lol
I am curious: what you guys do when you feel lost in the process?
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