What does it take to be an Entrepreneur

“What does it take to be an entrepreneur? That is the question I have been asking myself for some time now. Ever since I was a kid I always wanted to be my own boss and have the freedom of making my own decisions. For the last three years, I have been focusing on changing my life and have made some very interesting discoveries. Please allow me to introduce myself.

My name is Jonathan, originally from the Netherlands and recently moved to Finland. I am 26 years old and have a son of 8 months. I was a real stubborn kid who always went his own way and never cared what other people thought. However, my free spirit was caged at a young age due to a childhood drama. My parents divorced when I was 10 years old and that inflicted a lot of damage on their eight children. That is a whole ‘another story. I am sharing this to give you insight into the cards I was dealt.

Ever since my parents separated and all the drama it caused I felt lost. All my sense of stability was gone. As a way of dealing with it I imploded, I became shy and silent. Maybe I felt guilty in some way. I needed someone to follow, a role model. Sadly there was no such person in my life, I started following my friends.

In this way, I was trying to lead my friends on occasions, but I had become very sensitive to the opinions of others. I made a lot of stupid decisions and did a lot of damage to myself and the people around me. I was never good at school because I never put in any effort. My problem was with authority because I had become a rebel who broke all the rules. Looking back on this it was all just daddy issues. How often don’t you see this nowadays? There are so many fathers who just leave or give up. It is said that the father-son relationship is the most damaged relationship.

The Story Continues

I allowed my friends to have an influence on me that I did what they did. At age 14 I started smoking and close to my 15^th birthday I started smoking weed and drinking alcohol. This gave me a strong feeling of freedom and ‘being happy’ – when in fact I was of course just trying to escape reality. I was instantly addicted.

When I was 18 years old a lot of stuff happened that totally swept me off my feet. At the start of the year, my cousin killed himself (age 23), at the end of the year my grandma died of cancer. Death had a weird impact on me. Somewhere in between those two events, my sister had moved out of my mom’s house making me the oldest man in the house.

Suddenly a feeling of responsibility I had never felt before took over. I did not want my siblings to end up like me. It took me some time to figure out what to do but after my grandma’s death, it became clear to me. I had to make a change and I had to make a big change. It was time to stop running away and to face my fears. I put myself into rehab and started dealing with my issues one step at a time.

Rehabilitation

After 12 weeks of intense rehab, I was convinced that I could conquer the world. It felt so good to work on my problems and to face my fears. I moved to another city to start studying and begin a new life, thinking everything would get better. That was not the case as I fell back to my old habits trying to fit in and having an inferiority complex.

Within 2 years I found myself on rock bottom again. I was back where I started; I was smoking both cigarettes and weed and drinking alcohol. For a moment I thought I was living the good life but I all I was doing delaying the fact that I had some demons to fight.

During this time there were also some breakthroughs; a fierce desire to become more confident and the obvious area to start with was with women. I started to visit a gym regularly and started reading about fitness, nutrition and how to develop confidence. In a short time, I put the information into practice and felt better about myself as it worked. However, I had totally lost interest in my education.

I got lost in my head and allowed my old beliefs to take over. During a presentation at school, I collapsed. I couldn’t bring a word out and felt nothing but fear and humiliation. It was like a ghost from the past had come to visit me to tell me that no matter how hard I would try, I could never win in life.

All my new learning and all my old beliefs came in a collision. This caused a burn-out for me. I could finally see that all these years I was just trying to cover my insecurities and this created a massive identity crisis. I retreated from school for about six months and had to redo the year.

However, I did not give up and finished school two years later. And ever since I walked away with that diploma, I kept reading because even through all this I still had that fierce desire to become more confident.

Looking To The Future

I started working full-time and used my free time for working out. I started fantasizing about having my own gym. And the more I worked out and the more I read about fitness and nutrition, the more I got fascinated about what the human body is capable of. My vision has become a lot clearer and I have learned a lot. I am still far from where I want to be – both mentally and physically – but I know now what I want in life.

What Does It Take To Be An Entrepreneur

If there is one thing I have learned it is that whatever you want to reach, it is not coming to you. You have to go after it. If you want to know how to become better at anything, you better study the ways of the people who got there before you.

I have been studying the work of successful people and motivational speakers for some time now and what I found is that there are common factors to all of them. The one factor that I found is THEY KNOW WHAT THEY WANT.

Looking back to my story, I never really knew what I wanted. I always was so much consumed by circumstances and other people’s opinions that I never took the time to figure out what I am passionate about. When you discover what you truly want, make sure to write it down.

We have this thing called a subconscious mind. When you write down what you want, you activate your subconscious mind to remember it. And when you keep reminding yourself of what you wrote down by reading it daily it will become stronger, the desire will grow. Your subconscious mind will go to work and attract the thing that you desire most.

This has already happened throughout your whole life. Always keep in mind your subconscious attracts what you feed it. That means that if you feed your subconscious mind with negative thoughts or fears, it will attract more of that. That’s what happened to me.

If you start to repeat your desire to your subconscious it will become stronger than your current thoughts and conquer them. Fall in love with your idea, become obsessed with it, in this way your subconscious will have to work towards it. It is a complex topic but for now, just keep in mind; whatever you give attention, will grow. Stick with whatever it is you want. Steven Harvey said: “If you can see it in your mind, you can hold it in your hand.”

Conclusion

I have a lot more to say, but for now, I would like to challenge you to take this week and keep asking yourself this question: “What do I want in life? What do I absolutely love to do? What is that one thing I would do whether I get paid for it or not?” Keep asking yourself this question the whole week, and when something comes to mind make a little note of it.

Write down ten of the things that come to mind most. If it’s five things, that’s fine. There will be one or two of those things which you are interested in more than the others, write it down. When you have figured this out, you have to convince your subconscious mind that this is what you want. You do this by repeating it over and over and over again.

You will get resistance from your old conditioning way of thinking, telling you that you are not worthy enough or your goal is not good enough. People in your direct environment will discourage you, they will. Circumstances will indicate that you can never move out of your current situation, but never give in, keep repeating it and you are already on your way to achieving it.

Until next time.