When I was a child, I saw my parents live the life of entrepreneurship. It was full of responsibility, stress, and hard work. But it wasn’t a “live your best life” kind of situation.
There weren’t thousands of courses teaching you how to start a business and promising you that you’ll make ten thousand dollars a month. Side note: don’t buy those courses.
My parents were working more than full time, figuring it out as they went, and more often than not, carrying mounds of stress on their shoulders.
So as I was beginning my journey into entrepreneurship, that was my particular vantage point.
Before I really understood the freedom, flexibility and financial possibilities, I saw the work, responsibility and risk.
I knew going into my business that the big bonuses of being an entrepreneur were on the other side of the big risks.
I knew going in that there would be stress and a whole lot of uncertainty.
When I look at the culture of “be your own boss” today, I am beyond grateful that I had an example early on of how entrepreneurship really is.
So many people go into business thinking that being their own boss will be all about setting their own hours, working whenever they feel like it and coming with a side of fat paychecks.
When we are looking in from the outside, it’s so easy to believe that the way it appears must be the way that it is. But in reality, what we see is a very personal interpretation.
Our personal interpretation, in fact.
By the time we take information in, we’ve already run it through our own personal filtration system that we’ve crafted consciously and unconsciously due to the circumstances of our lives. The most incredible part is that we don’t even know we are doing it.
When your brain receives a piece of information, it immediately runs it through every experience you’ve ever had, so you can attribute meaning to it.
Our brains do this so we can make sense of what’s happening around us.
So when we see a nice professional woman working on her laptop at a coffee shop, we may assume she is living the good life and is a successful businesswoman.
But why?
It’s good to remind yourself that the way it seems isn’t likely the way it is — in all sorts of positive and negative ways. I know how easy it is to forget you are making these assumptions and snap judgements in the first place, so when you feel a strong thought come through about someone or a specific situation, get curious.
Ask yourself if this is actually true.
So much of what we see is not what there is to see so much as how we choose to see it. Being conscious and aware of this helps you live life with less comparison and less expectation.
It also gifts you the freedom to be open to discovering and learning along the way. Finally, it’s a never-ending reminder that life will keep you on your toes – and that is a very good thing.
