My Life Plan to Deconstruct My Fears!

Good evening all!

This week in my Introduction to Entrepreneurship class, I had the opportunity to think about a really important factor in our lives, which is our fears. Specifically I focused on my fears of what would happen in business scenarios. My fears included the idea of waking up and hating my job, not being able to achieve my dream of producing a screenplay, starting a business of my own and it failing, and finally getting let go of a high end executive job. Each of these fears, at least for me, would have negative impacts on my personal and family life as well as my financial situation. My class was asked three questions this week to focus on, and I am going to share them as well as answer them below:

  1. If you pursue your calling with discipline, intentionality, and the help of fellow travelers, what are the chances that your worst case scenario will really happen?

I think that there is always the chance of any fear coming true; however, when you help others and allow them to help you, it is much less likely that you will fail. Also, if you have a great work ethic and are disciplined to your role then you will typically find success in it. 

2.  As you look at your list of fears, what themes emerge? What is at the core of what you really fear? Financial ruin? The judgment or disapproval of others? Physical harm? Endangering the ones you love? Embarrassment?

The themes that emerge in my fears are usually having to do with the idea of a business scenario going poorly and negatively effecting my family's way of living or their comfort. I have seen many times in my life where bad financial situations have cause divorce or other sad family situations. Each of my scenarios leads to financial struggle. If I were to really break down the core of my fear, it would be endangering the ones I love. What I mean by this is endangering their mental well being and their level of comfort in the home. I never want my wife or kids to feel that they are deprived of basic necessities because of a business scenario that goes poorly. 

3.  What is the risk of taking no action – not following your calling? How do you plan to deal with fear when it pops up on your entrepreneurial journey?

The risk of not taking action or following your calling is that you will likely find yourself miserable in what you do. There are few things worse than working a job that you hate, because our jobs take up 1/3 of our day as it is. It is soul sucking and can negatively impact how we take care of ourselves and the way we treat others around us. In order to overcome my fears on my entrepreneurial journey, I took a step back to first determine what the fears were and then came up with an individual plan for each fear on how to overcome it. There are some fears in our life that are debilitating, and we have to be prepared to overcome them by being prepared with preset plans to do so.  

Education and Career Decisions and Moving Forward With Goals

Good evening all!

This week I gained some really interesting insights that I learned through my Introduction to Entrepreneurship class. The first thing that comes to my mind from the reading this week is the idea of "failing forward" This is essentially the idea that we all fail constantly in this life, but rather than letting those failures beat us down, we should be letting them build us up. Thomas Edison failed over 1,000 times in an attempt to create the light bulb. Currently, the light bulb is used worldwide and is a crucial piece of technology in society. Imagine if he gave up and we still had no light bulb today. It would be horrible. Each of us has goals and tasks we would like to complete in this life. When we fail at achieving them, it doesn't mean that we are done for. We can push through the failures, learn from our mistakes and keep getting one step closer until we reach success; just as Thomas Edison did with the light bulb. It isn't any secret that everyone fails at different things in their lives. It is how we handle those failures that will define our true success in this life. 

The second and last insight that I wanted to share from my learning this week is about a young woman named Magdalena Yesil. At 12 years old, she lived in Instanbul, Turkey with a strong desire to learn about the field of technology. As she approached the end of her high school years, she was prepared with the university options she wanted to attend and did everything necessary to reach her goals. Her first options were IIT located in Chicago, and MIT located in Massachusetts. She chose IIT, not realizing that she would dislike the Chicago region. She still had the passion to learn her craft, but it was important to her to do it in a place that she could still enjoy her life. She decided to turn to Stanford University in California. This would give her a home that felt similar to Istanbul, and still allow her to push forward with her higher education. The point of this story is that there are multiple options we can choose to achieve the same goal. Some of the options are going to make us miserable, some content, and others full of joy. For Magdalena, Chicago helped her reach her goal, but she was miserable. Instead, she moved to Stanford, got the education she wanted and was very pleased with the region. If we aren't happy with an option we are currently accepting, whether it is in our personal, professional, or educational goals, then we should find other options to achieve the same goals and bring us joy at the same time. 

Who is Randy Pausch and What Did He Teach?

This week, I had the opportunity to learn from a unique individual by the name of Randy Pausch. He was a professor at Carnegie Mellon University and was an excellent father and example of diligence to personal goals. The reason that he was able to achieve many of his life goals is because he is a positive thinker. Rather than look at failure as a bad thing, he looks at them as stepping stones. Rather than looking at road blocks as an opportunity to quit, he aims to break them to show how badly he wants to reach his goals. As I pondered what some of my life goals and dreams are, I realized that a lot of them get put on the back burner. Goals and dreams are extremely important in this life. They help motivate us to do something, they give us purpose and something to hope for. The problem is that if we don't prepare ourselves for the failures and road blocks, they will get put on the back burner like mine did. Randy learned early on that if you want to be successful at something, just keep going at it until you have achieved it. Don't think that you are ever too old to adopt this thinking, because even as we get older ,we can still achieve our dreams.
 One of my childhood dreams was to become a screenwriter or an actor. I loved the idea of conveying a message on screen for others to learn from and inspire them. I am 28 years old, and at this point in my life it is very possible to achieve both of these dreams. If I wanted to, I could go online and find a class either on YouTube or Groupon to learn how to write a screenplay. There would be roadblocks along the way, but because I already know that and expect them it wouldn't be too hard to overcome. There are professionals all over the world that do what I want to do. I could reach out and find inspiration from others who have achieved my dream and overcome trials to reach it. Heavenly Father gave us brothers and sisters to help us through challenges and to build off one another. With acting and screenwriting it is all about building off of others. Since I consider myself a person that can build rapport with anyone, and because I am a diligent worker, it would be very possible for me to achieve my dreams. It all begins with just starting.

Entrepreneurial Journal Blog - Week 1 Learnings from BUS 110 College Course

Hello everyone!

I am grateful for the opportunity to share some of the things that I learned during the first week of my entrepreneurial class. The first thing that came to my mind when I thought of the word entrepreneurial is the idea of coming up with a business idea and then executing it. It turns out that before you can really be a successful entrepreneur, you have to consider the "startup of you." This means that essentially you are going to figure out what you are all about. There were three questions that caught my interest in the reading this week. The first question is “what is my calling in life?” As I thought about it, the first thing that came to my mind is that I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. It is because of my faith that I first think about my relationship with God and how I want to please him with my thoughts and actions. My calling in life is to try to become like the Savior and in the process help others doing it. So, if I were to be an entrepreneur, I would want to focus on something that could help people beyond their typical needs. I think that is why I enjoy working in the healthcare industry, because it helps people physically and mentally to get through their days. The second question I thought about is “How do I create meaning.” This is a tougher question because it made me think about how I can create meaning in my own home as well as beyond my own family. To be perfectly honest, it is a great question that I don’t have the answer to just yet, but I plan to figure it out before the end of this semester. The last question that I thought about is “How will I measure my life?” I feel as though there is an easy answer to this, and one that works well for me. I measure my life based on how closely I follow the Lords commands, or if I fail, do I remember to repent. If I did my absolute best at the end of the day I feel good because I know that Lord will support me through my failures and cheer with me through my successes.