Tag Archives: fear

Let Go: Agreeing To Let Go At the Right Time

Letting go of something can be perhaps the most difficult thing we come across in our lives. As kids, letting go of something isn’t an option, and therefore we are taught by our parents that the best thing to do is to let go because we may receive something bigger in return. However, it sounds nice, but the greediness within us keeps telling us no, this is comfort and I want it to stay that way.

As becoming leaders, we will come to times where we will face decisions with our relationships and team to determine if we think it’s the proper time to let it go or not. Those frustrating decisions when one of your most loyalists mentions they want to move on and go do their own thing. How do we handle those situations?

I recently experienced one of my very own closest friends I collaborated with deciding to move out of state. It was the most toughest thing I’ve ever heard. I responded to him that no he couldn’t go he has every helpful resource here, but he replied back saying he wanted to start a new life somewhere he desired to be.

Knowing him since my childhood and growing up together, at first I thought it was an insult. After everything we’ve been together and how much we both helped each other, that the end result would come to this. But I began to think clearly now, that as we come to age, not everyone stays in one place. What we have as comfort will not always be there in order to keep growing, we have to give something up in order to receive something bigger in return.

Having a hard thing to listen to, I agreed that I too thought it was the right time for him to carry on to a new journey. I gave him words of advice, and having the great technology we have now, we can on occasion schedule a Skype call to catch up on how things are going.

What I’ve learned from this is that this situation can occur on our team as well. The person we shared our knowledge into, cannot and won’t be there for a long period of time of we want them to be leaders as well. As the saying goes, leaders are hard to keep. They too will have to break free from the pack and hire a great team repeating the same cycle all over.

If we deny them wanting to leave, we are doing ourselves nor them any good. The time to show them great leadership is when we demonstrate them our decision making skills at the point of time. They expect us to deny their reasoning, but when we come to agreement that it’s the right time to take on their journey, we become that root of great influence and respect. We are not only building leaders, but we are building an empire of great leaders and what’s more to have than that?

As of now, we continue to lead pulling forward and not look back. There’s always room for growth and deciding to let go of situations similar to this, can be the right choice made.

To conclude this post, how has letting go made an impact on you? Was it the right choice at the right time? What did you learn from your experience and what can we do based on what you went through?

Lessons at Work

Throughout the year I went out into the job market to study how it really is like working in a field that I did not enjoy. Having grown up and worked/made small projects for my parents, I’ve learned the complex life of working at a nine to five job. I decided to do this because I figured it might be a way to motivate myself to start my own business. Was it a good idea? More than likely yes. I want to share with you three of the issues that has build upon me throughout the year that I’ve taken noticed and what I have done to resolve them.

First and foremost I think we can all agree that depression takes a hit when you’re at a job you don’t love. I didn’t start noticing this as much until I began planning out other projects I had apart from my job. During the weekends, I would spend most of my time studying and finding ways to strategize a business project I wanted to start, but once Sunday night hit, it felt frustrating because I knew I wouldn’t have enough time over the week. Throughout the week I would just think about the project, any changes or when I get back I’ll look at other related projects. The frustration began to build up, not only because I didn’t want to be there, but because I felt like I had so many things going on at the same time and I wanted to get it done.

Depression tends to hit people hard. Your mind barricades itself from the outside world and it is difficult getting yourself out once you’re at mid-point. There are many helpful articles all over the web that helps you out of depression. I denied I was depressed and kept saying I was mostly frustrated, but it ended up being the same. So what did I do about this?

I was very fortunate enough to have read many articles about depression in high school, I had friends that would feel like this after a rough breakup in their relationships, and I would give them advice of my own what I knew at the time; if anything, to help. One of the very and most important things I had to do was to talk it out with someone whom could guide me out of it. I think this was key to getting out of it quick. I knew signs of depression was rising and once it hit, I had to talk to someone to give me their feedback about what they thought. If you have signs of depressions I would encourage you to talk to a therapist or someone that could guide you out.

Next, I’ve tried questioning why are people afraid to leave their jobs or why people rather waste time watching television after they get home rather than spending that time studying on something they want to achieve?

The answer is comfort! While working at my job, I began to really feel comfortable. What do I mean by comfortable? Comfortable by making expenses bigger than what I could afford, and the feeling of depending on that job.

I read helpful tips from Noah Kagan and wrote down what’s the worst that can happen if I left my job at this moment. What I came to figure out was that, money played a huge roll. We get comfortable with with our salaries that it gets hard to leave that to accept something much lower.

So what I had to start doing was change my habits. I started lowering my expenses dramatically, and saved my salary instead. Although there’s this issue I’m debating about that I stumbled upon with Robert Kiyosaki saying saving doesn’t work anymore, rather invest in things you will benefit from.

Finally, the people you don’t enjoy working with. Before being hired at the place I worked at, I didn’t know about this problem. I thought, no that can’t be true, I’m sure the leader in charge will solve that out get. Unfortunately where I was at, this was not true.

There were two particular people that I could not stand to be working with. Now as studying to be a leader, I would take steps to make the situation better, but I would say those two at first would not accept anything and go on with their own. I had to acknowledge the fact that there are people out there that carry a mind full of negativity and do not want help.

One very helpful way to resolve these situations is to always carry a positive mind. Perhaps it sounds cheap, but if you look at this from an outside prospective. If one person is angry and you show positive energy towards them, they’re going to want to bring you to their level by you responding angry as well.

They’re going to do things that makes you bring out negative emotions, and by doing so, your on their playing field; they’re taking advantage of you. Instead avoid that, show you are bigger by being positive and bring them up to your field.

These three issues I think are the biggest that I have noted and impacted me over the year while having a job. I’ve really learned a lot from this experience and I hope this post gives you some guidance on what to do and avoid as well. What are your experiences while working at a job you don’t enjoy? Would you agree that the feeling of being too comfortable at your last job was difficult for you to go out on your own and start your business? What steps did you take to let go of it?

Knocking Out Fear & Networking With Others

Last week I had the opportunity to attend Denver Startup Week, and it was an amazing experience. I must say it’s my second time I go to an event like this and I plan on attending many future events like this.

When I first heard about the event, I marked it down on my calendar, I was excited about it but there was this emotion of fear going on. As the day got closer and closer, I began to worry even more about the what happens if this or that situation would occur.

I began to question instead of what, I asked why did I fear about these issues. It’s not just an only me issue but many people will come to a point; where before they attend an event for those starting out, will begin to worry about the weak parts of themselves. Wondering what if I don’t fit in or what if they know more than me, and not knowing what they’re talking about.

When I asked myself why did I have this fear of attending an event with a huge gathering, it made a switch in my mind that in reality it’s nothing to worry about.

When I got there, it was such a great turnout. Not only were people willing to come up and meet me, but they were delighted to give me advice in the struggling areas. Not knowing where this mindset of everyone being selfish came from, but I had in mind many people would not offer advice because they’d think I’m too inexperienced or too young, and it wasn’t like that.

A book I recommend you to read is called “Never Eat Alone” by Keith Ferrazzi. It’s such a great book about how in order to be successful we must also find other people and work with them. Making these relationships with others will help us grow and gain additional knowledge we didn’t know about.

What we should learn about this is that we shouldn’t have the mentality of fear plugged into our minds, instead we should keep in mind how important it is to establish a network relationship with other people similar to your field. However, we shouldn’t just walk up to them and ask if we may have their personal phone number. We have to ask ourselves what is it that we could do for them that they later can do for us.

What are your experiences in first creating a relationship with others? Were you afraid of any small mess-ups that weren’t true? What advice would you recommend for those first-timers?

Choosing the Right Idea

I’ve been coming up with so many business ideas lately and the problem that has arise to me is that it always comes to mind that the idea will not work. Similar to the first post, I’ve been keeping my mind open to all the options that are available in creating great ideas. But somehow this thing in the back of my mind somehow always comes up saying the idea probably won’t work.

I’ve been listening to great speakers talk about this issue and it’s very common. One of the speakers who I appreciate so much and would love to have the chance to meet is Jason Nazar. CEO and co-founder of Docstoc, he spoke about how we shouldn’t be worried if an idea will work or not. We actually instead should be worried if that idea exists within the market because if it doesn’t exist, then you won’t be able to sell it.

It doesn’t matter if the idea we have already exists or if it sounds stupid, we should take that idea and figure out how we can make it different and improve it to the public. And that’s what I think we have to put in focus, rather than fearing if our idea will work or not, we have to execute it. So how do we know if our idea will work?

There are several questions we must ask ourselves first in order to make that idea become a reality. Similar to a business plan with getting down to specifics, two questions that are important to ask are: Who are our audience? What is their problem?
Figuring how we can deliver it and create demand will come afterwards.

So how do you know your idea you came up with will work? Have you doubted yourself with that idea? One advice that has begun to get implanted into my head is that when we have an idea, lets execute it with the least amount of cost possible. That way you won’t risk a lot and you can start all over again with out the weight on your back from the previous idea.

It’s awesome coming up with many different ideas, but I think when we have the mindset of thinking if it will work or not should be forgotten. I always speak with my mentor about it and if you’re in that struggle of figuring which idea will work or not, I would suggest talking with a mentor to advise you which is best.