as an entrepreneur what keeps you going when you want to give up?

We are never privy to the underbelly of that road to success. Even when movies are made, the struggle time is short, the challenges glamorized; the director has an hour and a half to run us through a gamut of emotions, with our eyes fixed on the hero, knowing at the get-go that she would be successful.

We don’t get to learn lines or get into character. We are living and dealing as shit comes up – challenging us day in, and day out.

What keeps you going?

I’ve always been driven by something larger than me. I don’t think I have everything I need but that feeling, that drive, never leaves. Even when I kick back and succumb to watching a series on T.V. in lieu of doing the work, it’s there.

Speaking of series, I was watching The Sinner named after the book published in 1999, by Petra Hammesfahr’s which served as the basis for the first season. In Season 3 much of the discussion is around confronting death, and living fully. It got me thinking about perfection and procrastination. Are we in some indirect way trying to stave off death as much as we could? Because if we actually complete things and achieve stuff, then what’s left for us? Do we somehow believe that these large, looming, reasons to live, that consume us are such that once complete – our lives are over?

If something seems impossible, this is what drives us. Not the easy or the doable. The impossible is challenging. Makes us think. We need to find a solution. This is the drive, the impetus for continuing with the journey.

When we are young, we overestimate our runway – the time it takes to achieve our destiny. We don’t have tons of money but we know that time is on our side. When we are older we believe there is not enough time.

Both views have zero merit.

That we can control what happens in our lives is an idea worth letting go of.

I was surprised to learn that one of my favorite authors Robert Greene, had a stroke. A friend of mine told me that he’d had a mild stroke, sometime in 2022. Healthy people get cancer. Freak accidents occur. Tragedy strikes when we least expect it.

I know that confronting death seems macabre, but perhaps we need to use it as a catalyst. My grandmother used to say “eat drink and be merry for tomorrow, you may die”. The Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius pronounced that “perfection of character is this: to live each day as if it were your last, without frenzy, without apathy, without pretense.”

With an impossible task at hand – we must do all that we can to achieve that placed in us, that known only to us, that urge, that desire to do that thing…we must commit to doing whatever it takes towards achievement. And we must never go under the spell that we have lots of time or that we have too little time. Each day we must make the most of that day. Do our best. Work on our impossible task. Live as if, it were our last. And if this is not the case – KEEP GOING!