Great ideas take flight when you are free of fear. Everyone faces fear, and that includes innovative, successful entrepreneurs. An entrepreneur’s very job is to swim upstream. The trick is maintaining faith in yourself and in your ideas despite doubt. If you want to be an innovator, a creative disruptor, you must embrace ways to stay fearless.
An elite athlete isn’t just magically ready for the competition – she runs through hundreds of practice drills to perfect her skills before the big day. Just the same, there are ways to strengthen your faith in the face of fear.
- Get out of your usual surroundings. Creativity can flourish when you take a break from your routine. Some of my best business ideas come to me when I’m away from the office, walking with my rescue pup Magic in Central Park. Mulling things over in a totally different setting is rejuvenating, re-energizing, and often helps you see things in a new light.
- Shift the way you think about failure. Yes, there are obstacles and roadblocks along the way. No path to success is perfectly smooth – something that might look like “instant” success comes from years of work behind the scenes. Running into a setback isn’t failure. Failure is letting a temporary setback change your permanent outlook. It’s only when you let “failure” define how you think of yourself, that you’ve actually failed. Some of the most successful entrepreneurs used the valuable lessons learned from early failures to build a platform for much greater success.
