18. Be Prepared To Lose - Business Bits - 30 Days Challenge

It’s the 18th day of my 30 days writing challenge on business and, to be honest, I’m just warming up.

I mean, we only talked a few times about money, (and that’s vey important, I admit), we briefly touched product development and human resources and we have just 12 days left!

So much to write about, so little time.

Without further ado, then, let’s talk about one of the key attitudes that you, as an entrepreneur, should be ready to embrace.

It’a About Being Ready To Lose

I know that this goes against the mainstream, goal oriented, motivationally overloaded, pushy, obsessive and “the winner takes it all” mentality, but, believe me, it’s crucial to be ready to lose.

Not in the sense of planning for it, obviously, but in the way of detaching yourself a little and being ready for it, if it happens.

At first, it will feel uncomfortable and it will breed probably quite a lot of anxiety. But as you get more aligned with this attitude you reach a certain level where you are more ready to embrace one of the fundamental truths about how we, as individuals, exist: we cannot control anything except our reaction to the outside world.

No matter how powerful you are, no matter how much many you have, no matter how many people you employ, you are 99.99% the same as every other human being. You can barely remember what you did 3 days ago. You have no way to predict what will happen over 3 days.

The only thing that you’re actually experiencing is this present moment.

I don’t want you to paint your favorite grimace while you’re mumbling: “well, yet another mumbo-jumbo about philosophy, mixed into a business related post”. Because it’s not mumbo-jumbo.

Let me outline just 3 very pragmatic benefits of maintaining this attitude.

1. More Time

By being ready to start over again, without clinging too much to the past, or to a dormant business, you give yourself the gift of time. Time is a non-renewable asset. You can’t buy more.

Of course, you should do whatever you can to keep the ship afloat and to sail wherever you want for as much as you can. But once the ship is wrecked to the point of oblivion, there’s no reason to stay there, like forever.

Look back with pride, knowing that you did everything that you could possibly do, and start over.

2. Less Loss

If you allow yourself to lose a little every once in a while, you will end up gaining a lot. Sometimes loss is the path to profit. Sometimes, by getting out early from a losing trade (or venture, or business partnership) you will avoid a much bigger disaster.

Cut the losses, and move on.

3. More Experience

I’m sure you know the saying “Good judgement comes from experience, but experience comes from bad judgement”, I wrote about it a few posts ago.

So don’t treat your failed businesses like war battles that you lost. Maybe you lost a significant amount of time and money and that can’t be recovered anymore, but if you paid attention to the entire process, you gained something way more important: experience.

Or the ability to not make the same mistake twice.

So, strive to accept that some projects will work, some not. You will lose money at some point. Just be prepared, it’s part of the game. If it’s not working, it’s not working.

Don’t get stuck, because the speed of the online market will simply leave you behind if you don’t move.

image source

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This post is part of a 30 days challenge on business, you can find the entire list of articles here.

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I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me @dragosroua.