by Tlholo Mabelane
Do entrepreneurs fail because they are discouraged, or are they discouraged because they fail? Well, for many of us when we embark on our journeys towards our goals and dreams we go in with what feels like a healthy sense of sober understanding that it will be an all-encompassing journey. We expect to have challenging days, we don’t anticipate a silver spoon feeding, and are ready to put in the work. We hold a posture of possibility and we do what we can as best as we can.
For me, when I started my entrepreneurial journey it meant taking ahold of every sharing moment to let someone know what I am doing; after all you will never know who can help you. I was in the habit of sharing at an annual entrepreneurial platform I was fortunate to be a part of and simply risking the moment to share my ideas. Outside the entrepreneurial sessions the realities of everyday dreaming faced me and my approach to them left me feeling combusted rather than ignited on my journey. I started sharing less, until I wasn’t sharing my dream with others at all. I recall deciding one time that sharing my idea at the entrepreneurial platform just would not make a difference and I even decided that year to not attend the main event. To my dismay it became the first time there was a generous sponsoring of all potentially viable ideas shared at the event. When I got the news, I was shattered. I had missed out of an opportunity to potentially get the funding I needed to jumpstart my business.
I learnt an important lesson that would shape my entrepreneurial journey; discouragement is a serious thief that must be intentionally kept out. I realized that despite my good excuses for feeling discouraged it was way too costly. I hated how a moment of discouragement could steal from many months and years of hard work.
Discouragement can be preempted and so it’s important to take precautionary measures against it. Firstly, it’s important to understand why we get encouraged.
When you have an endeavor, you are working towards all the things that affirm the possibility of your success encourage you; they fuel you. You get encouraged from simply knowing what you want to, to seeing progress after taking some sort of action or even knowing what to do next after something hasn’t worked. Discouragement happens in the same way so we can develop a few habits to avoid the pit of discouragement:
Keep the vision close; remind yourself of what you want and share it with dream polishers and keep it away from discoursing voices.
Keep learning how to work: you might have a lot of energy but it’s so important to learn from others on ways of working and strategies to actually start and grow your business. Don’t just work hard.
Build in community: Find forums, platforms and spaces to be with like minded people. Share and also listen to others on their journey.
Don’t let learning be confined by the definition of failure. Pivot ideas, try a different way, try a different thing but don’t sit in discouragement and miss out on your dreams.
Tlholo Mabelane is an entrepreneur driven by her vision to celebrate African identity through shifting mindsets and to empower the economic landscape of Africa by establishing and empowering successful businesses. Tlholo Mabelane is an entrepreneur in the hair industry and founder of MabuTribe healthy haircare. She is also a management consultant in the business development space focusing on the area of business strategy and operations having worked in the enterprise development, media, public and banking sectors.
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