Perseverance. Discipline. Patience. Sacrifice. Consciousness. Focus.
These aren’t words that make me very popular with young entrepreneurs. No one wants to hear the truth about what it will really take to build a purpose-driven company. Most young entrepreneurs just want to hear the positive affirmations and the excitement rah-rah, how to be the next Facebook or Google. But that will only get you 2 feet in the door. What it really takes is a whole other ballgame.
You have to govern yourself by a new set of rules. A set of rules they don’t teach you in business school.
Be willing to let everything go. Understand how to prioritize, what constitutes a real problem looks very different depending on the stage of the game you’re at and the consciousness you’re in.
Recognizing when you’ve outgrown your current structure and have to recreate it again and again. Just when you get comfortable – game change. There is no comfort here.
When to push more firmly, when to pull back. When you have to be the one to do it all, roll your sleeves up and get the job done. And then in the blink of an eye you’re past your capacity and need to get a high level team in yesterday.
How to surround yourself with people who vibrate at your frequency. To be totally ok if your entire team is recreated 3 or 4 times before you stabilize. That the people you started with may be a whole different group of people you finish with.
And that every, single day, you start from 0. It is an illusion to think that somehow we earn a bank account of accomplishments that we can hit cruise control on and ride the tide to retirement. Every day, you earn it. Every day, you start from 0 and you work for it. You have to recreate yourself every…single…day.
And failure will be a constant companion. Not only will you fail in your commitments to yourself, your friends, your family, you’ll make epic mistakes that will cost you financially, followed by more screw ups, even more screw ups and eventually you just have to get comfortable with a constant state of failing forward. Everyone will want something from you you can’t give them and the weight of their expectations and your inability to meet them will feel enormous at times.
And if that isn’t enough, you’ve got to prepare yourself for a level of attack from everyone under the sun who wishes you ill, has a judgment about who, what and how you are, what you’re doing, how you’re doing it and will question your integrity, your character and plant seeds of doubt that will not only trip you up, they’ll paralyze you. You’ll be hung on someone’s cross on more than a few occasions, held up by someone’s judgments and crucified against someone’s gods.
But all of that will pale in comparison to what lies ahead. It will all seem like a cake walk compared to the depth of fear, discomfort and anguish you’ll experience in having to confront yourself. Because the only way to get to where you’re going is to completely transform yourself – your history, story, emotional maturity, discipline, accountability, commitment, deepest fears, darkest inadequacies.
The only way out, is through. And depending on your path, your karma and your purpose – that can be a gut wrenching, painstaking, heart breaking, process.
This is where the rubber meets the pavement. This is where true leaders are born. This is where our free will is truly at work in our lives – because we have to become so disciplined in what we focus on, what thoughts we allow into our consciousness, who’s commentary on our lives we’re going to listen to, what priorities we’re going to set, what we’re willing to sacrifice because we are committed to a deeper purpose.
We are confronted with choice in every, single moment. Who are we going to choose to be here? Now? Am I going to choose to let my past run me or focus on the future I am creating? Am I going to choose to let my critics define me or listen to my deeper knowing? Am I going to choose to forgive and let go or keep myself chained to unforgiveness that poisons my heart just so I can be right? Am I going to choose to let these challenges break me and blame life for my own inadequacies, or am I going to see them as tools, all working for my greater good to support me in achieving and becoming the fullest expression of myself in this life? Am I going to be brave enough to tell the truth, the real truth, to myself about my ego, my unconscious behaviours and negative patterns to bring them to light and transform them, however uncomfortable or ugly they may be, and choose to build forward, or stay unconscious and let those patterns run me, control me and take me out at the knees?
What we focus on, we become. What we give power to, has power over us. What we choose to be, we will be. What we choose to let define us, will define us.
Life is designed to push us, to test us, to earn what we desire, not to have it handed to us. We cannot steward what we do not resonate with. And we have to grow our consciousness to become aligned with the thing we are creating. And there are only a few words that will take us there – they aren’t popular, they aren’t easy, they require depth and integrity and they are driven and lead by Purpose.
Discipline. Focus. Consciousness. Commitment. Perseverance. Sacrifice. Patience.
Krystine McInnes is CEO and Project Director of Athena Farms and Grown Here Farms. Stewarding purpose-driven, change-making projects with a focus on Planet, People, Profit and a commitment to Sustainable Business models.
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