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Do You Have What It Takes To Be An Entrepreneur?

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Look around you. Now, more than ever, the world teems with constant change.

Some succumb, consumed by the cascading chaos.

Winners smile broadly, delighted by the array of percolating opportunities.

“Do I have what it takes to be an entrepreneur?”

This is the question every budding entrepreneur asks. It is the wrong question.

Imagine

Wouldn’t you benefit more if, before beginning on your entrepreneurial journey, you knew what talents successful entrepreneurs possess?

Rather than first asking if you have them, you’d be much wiser to ask what they are.

Before answering that unasked question, behold the very first lesson of this series. It’s a lesson you should carry with you at all times. It reveals the ultimate axiom, the rule that Continue Reading “Do You Have What It Takes To Be An Entrepreneur?”

Is Starting A Business Worth It?

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Can you feel inflation eating away at your income? Are you worried matters will only get worse as the nation dives deeper into recession? Perhaps you’re eying that favorite hobby of yours, wondering if you can tweak it a bit to bring in some much-needed revenue.

What’s holding you back?

If you’ve spent the bulk of your career working for someone else, it’s only natural to wonder if starting a business right now is worth it. You can be on the cusp of retirement or even in retirement. Sure, you enjoy helping people, but wouldn’t it be easier just to give it away for free and cut back on other expenses?

Well, no matter what your age, a healthy challenge can invigorate the soul.

“Starting a business can be an exciting responsibility to take on for many people,” says Nick Chandi, CEO, and Co-Founder of ForwardAI in Vancouver, British Columbia. “It’s also a Continue Reading “Is Starting A Business Worth It?”

The Seven Paths To Lifetime Bliss

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You remember the story. Mother drags Son to a family wedding. Son doesn’t want to go. Mother nags the Son to get off His seat and have some fun at the party. Son wants none of it. “It’s not my time,” He tells her.

What? Was He waiting for the DJ to play “Paradise by the Dashboard Light”? Clearly, the Son wasn’t hungry for Meatloaf. Nor was He particularly thirsty for wine.

But be honest here, what son can deny his mother? This Son was no different. And when mom told the waiters to “do whatever He says,” they did.

Thus was the back story of Jesus’ first miracle during the Wedding at Cana.

This isn’t the story we’re telling here. We’re talking about what happens before the Continue Reading “The Seven Paths To Lifetime Bliss”

Strategic Planning For The Soul

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I’ve always enjoyed the adventure of strategic planning. I call it an “adventure” because it requires one to truly explore the meaning and philosophy of a corporate soul.

A corporate soul differs from a human soul in that the former comprises an entity of many individual souls. With so many human souls making up its psyche, it’s often entertaining to watch as these individuals confuse their personal souls with the corporation’s soul.

OK, I admit this is a form of voyeuristic cynicism, but look, people are egocentric. And the Continue Reading “Strategic Planning For The Soul”

Do Self-Assessments Really Work?

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What’s the difference between the Lifetime Dream Process and any of the many other forms of self-assessment? While some of the more astute readers might have already deduced the answer by reading the preceding Commentaries, at some point it helps everyone to forgo subtlety and bluntly reveal why the Lifetime Dream Process is not like any other process you might have heard of or even tried. In the next two weeks, I’ll begin to conclude this series by comparing and contrasting the Lifetime Dream Process to several of these systems.

This week I’d like to focus on self-assessments. These often come in the form of a test but might also take on the nature of a conversation. In either case, compared to the Lifetime Dream Process, each fails to get deeply into the heart of the matter.

To understand why getting to the heart of the matter is important, you might want to read Continue Reading “Do Self-Assessments Really Work?”

How To Declare Independence And Start Pursuing Your Happiness

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Many folks think Thomas Jefferson “borrowed” the phrase “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” from John Locke. The 17th Century British philosopher and physician famously wrote, in the unsigned Second Treatise Concerning Civil Government, that government exists to protect one’s life, liberty, and property. Sounds awfully similar to the words used by our Founding Father nearly ninety years later.

Significantly, Locke’s focus on personal “property” breaks from the sense of Thomas Hobbes. In his 1651 treatise Leviathan, Hobbes paints a sovereign-centric ideal. In this “social contract,” citizens cede personal freedoms to the ruler in exchange for protection. Without such protection, the contract is invalidated.

Bear in mind, Hobbes wrote this while in exile during the English Civil War between the Parliamentarians and the Royalists. He rejected Aristotle’s premise that man is driven by Continue Reading “How To Declare Independence And Start Pursuing Your Happiness”

Why America’s Founding Secretly Influences You

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You don’t have to be an American to say you’re an American. That was the whole idea of the American Experiment – it was meant for all nations, not just those uppity Tea Partiers who frolicked in Boston Harbor a few centuries back. But this experiment didn’t start with the American Revolution, Declaration of Independence or even the United States Constitution. It began with a collection of oppressed runaways and an accidental metaphor that endures to this day.

After reading a perhaps too rosy account of the Plymouth Colony by the Pilgrims Edward Winslow and William Bradford, excitement grew in England to establish more companies to Continue Reading “Why America’s Founding Secretly Influences You”

How to Live the Good Life with No Regrets

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“Why is This Important to You?”

Socrates believed “the unexamined life is not worth living.” He may not have coined the phrase “know thyself,” but he’s famous for traipsing the streets of Athens examining lives by nagging prominent people until he proved they did not “know thineselfs.”

So effective was he the good city-state of democracy voted to put him to death. Socrates, despite his friends’ wishes, readily agreed to drink the hemlock and thus first came into usage the phrase “good career move.”

But before he died, Socrates perfected a method that would become his lasting legacy. Used today anywhere from the courtroom, to the classroom, to the psychologist’s couch, we call it the “Socratic Method” (which just shows you how terribly dull and unimaginative philosophers can be at times).

In a nutshell, here’s how it works. Come up with a question or hypothesis and keep asking annoying questions (often the same one or of the same form) until you’ve eliminated all Continue Reading “How to Live the Good Life with No Regrets”

The Secret to Getting Anything You Want

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History’s Greatest Quest

“TELL ME, O MUSE, of that ingenious hero who travelled far and wide after he had sacked the famous town of Troy. Many cities did he visit, and many were the nations with whose manners and customs he was acquainted; moreover he suffered much by sea while trying to save his own life and bring his men safely home; but do what he might he could not save his men, for they perished through their own sheer folly in eating the cattle of the Sun-god Hyperion; so the god prevented them from ever reaching home. Tell me, too, about all these things, O daughter of Jove, from whatsoever source you may know them…”

(BOOK I, The Odyssey, Homer ca 800 BC)

Before embarking on the journey you are about to take, some self-doubt is normal and healthy. But it shouldn’t hold you back. The very nature of self-discovery resides in your blood.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll reveal how and why this is so. I’ll explain to you why your Continue Reading “The Secret to Getting Anything You Want”

How To Be Successful: The Explosive Truth

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(continued from “Why The Harvard MBA Should Be FIREd”)

Remember those paint-by-numbers kits we got as kids for too many birthdays? They had the allure of any typical get-rich-quick scheme. Each package featured the finished painting on its cover. It looked like a masterpiece. You just knew the Louvre had a space just for it, probably right next to the Mona Lisa. And – here’s the kicker – in just a few short hours you will have created an exact copy, suitable for hanging on your mother’s refrigerator!

Oh, joy, rapture! I got artistic talent!

And it was so easy, wasn’t it? Each kit came with clearly numbered paints, each number corresponding to a numbered shape on the heavy cardboard canvas supplied. It was as simple as 1, 2, 3… Picasso!

Picasso?!

You dreamed Monet and you got Picasso. And that was being generous. As you painted, you saw nothing but a series of random splotches of color. You might see an image, but Continue Reading “How To Be Successful: The Explosive Truth”

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