Entrepreneurship: Fear is Nothing New

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Hi, everyone! Welcome to The Limitless Blog! My name is Radhika and I'm the founder of Jiva More Life. Our mission is to inspire you to believe that you are limitless. Today we're talking about fear that comes with being an entrepreneur.

What type of fears were you grappling with when you first started Jiva?

My biggest fear when I first started Jiva was if it was the right thing to pursue. I absolutely love art and it’s one of my number one passions but at the time I felt like there were so many things I could do. I had to decide, should I pursue Jiva and art to this degree where it's my number one project and then all my free time is going to this? That was my biggest question or fear: should I do this? Is it worth my time? Is it worth spending energy on?

I also always wondered if people liked my work. I was worried because I liked my work and I knew the close circle I had shown it to liked it, but I hadn't showed it to a massive audience. Then I had to think about what it would be like to post on social media and would they like it? How would people respond? Would people vibe or not? That was really scary because you don't really want to be turned down.

Another fear I had was around what would the people around me think about what I was doing. I'm in the healthcare industry, so going from healthcare to art and entrepreneurship is a lot riskier or can seem a lot more unstable, but it was something that I was really passionate about and really wanted to do. At the same time, however, I wanted the people around me to be supportive. Now, how do you make that happen? How do you take something that is riskier, but go all in so you can show the people around you it's worth it?  

Did you ever feel a fear of failure?

I definitely did, especially at the beginning, but also every day. It's one of those things - You really want to succeed and you don't want to fail. We're taught that failing is bad and success is the only answer. We're supposed to be good at everything and we're supposed to always have the answers, but that's not actually real life. We have to fail in order to succeed. How do you get better at doing something? By doing it over and over and over again. When you're little, you do a lot of things repetitively, so you can get better at them. But when you're older, there are still things you don't know so you have to be open to doing it again and again and again, until you get better at them. You can't expect yourself to already know things you don't, so you have to fail to succeed.

In one of the books I'm reading right now, it says that in entrepreneurship 9 out of 10 businesses fail. That might be a scary statistic if you're starting your own business like me. Or you can take it from the opposite side and decide that you have to fail nine times to create a successful business, so you might as well start failing now.

What about a fear of success?

 Definitely not, I am so excited to be successful. Bring it on.

Most people are afraid of massive success because of the changes that it'll bring to their lives, it’s the other side of the coin to the fear of failure.

That's the whole point though - the change. I'm working this hard to change and to see the changes that being successful brings. I’m not working this hard to stay the same. In life you're supposed to grow and change over time. That's what we're working so hard for.

If we wanted to stay the same, do nothing, and just hang out our lives will stay the same. If you're happy, great, but if you're really trying to build something and you're trying to be really successful, then you're trying to see changes. You're working hard every single day to see those changes. So I'm definitely not afraid of success.

And I say for the people that are, what are you working this hard for then, if not to change your current life?