Sustaining the Entrepreneurial Spirit

Successful people in every field of activity focus on two things – namely spirit and action.

The action comprises aspects related to doing. The doing component involves picking up skills, keeping abreast with latest in the field, practice and complete involvement in the field of work.  For example a sportsman tries to constantly learn new skills, work on endurance, maintains a good diet, constantly practice and most importantly routinely participate in events and competition. While all the above relate to the action component that leads to success, the athlete or the sports person also has to constantly maintain a positive frame of mind and high self confidence. The softer aspect relating to the spirit, is often neglected and in most cases creates the difference between the consistently successful and those with potential to succeed.

An aspiring entrepreneur or an existing one has immense takeaway in the above analogy.

Just like the sports person the entrepreneur spends a lot of time in writing a business plan, meeting people, creating a team, marshalling other resources but forgets the subtler aspect of maintaining the entrepreneurial spirit. This lack of developed or sustained entrepreneurial spirit hinders full involvement in acting on the idea.  Hence you find a number of entrepreneurs who sight interesting opportunities and also have the potential to capitalise, but in most cases failing to do so.

The reason being the lack of entrepreneurial motivation to catalyse and overcome the inhibitors  at both the thought and action level. It is important to understand that this neither refers only to seeking motivation externally nor to opting for short getaways for relaxation in an attempt to bring balance to the high intensity work involved in entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurial spirit refers to the subtler abilities of gumbharoo, objectivity, the spirit of sacrifice and service, equanimity etc.  While there are many ways in which people may choose to develop these subtler abilities, the important message, is that it needs to be consciously developed and maintained.  Across disciplines and fields of activity including entrepreneurship, the focus on acknowledging and developing the subtler abilities is normally absent or malnourished.  Failure to do so erodes, even the initial quotient present at the start of the journey as one is made to come to terms with demands of actions. The impact of the under developed spirit reduces the ability to persevere, face challenges and tap into bigger opportunities.

Hence it is important that every entrepreneur to take both the spirit and the habit aspects of development seriously and spend time and effort in maintaining them for a long haul journey of success.

How does one actually go about developing these subtler qualities that defines the spirit of the performer? Makes good thinking in the coming weeks…