The “Doomed to Fail” Belief System of Struggling Entrepreneurs
Are you an entrepreneur who’s doomed to fail? I’m no fortune teller, but I can help you with this early warning evaluation. Answer these four simple questions below:
- Do you have an killer app idea that you KNOW will go viral if you could just get it built?
- Have you ever invested your money or time in what looking back you would consider a get rich quick scheme?
- Do you regularly think about winning the lottery big or having a big day in Vegas (or some other gambling scheme)?
- Do you see Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social networking apps as overnight success stories?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you may have the “doomed to fail” belief system. A belief system that could limit your ability to build a real business from scratch.
How do I know? Because I am personally a victim of this “doomed to fail” belief system. I quit my six figure job in 2012 because I wanted to become a millionaire and be a venture backed startup founder. I thought coming up with a killer app idea was the critical ingredient. Boy was I wrong.
Ever since 2015 when I shut down my startup, I made a decision to understand all the reasons why I failed. To this day, I spend hours of brain cycles reflecting and researching the many factors of success and failure. At this point, I am ready to admit that my belief system was one of the critical factors.
The “Doomed to Fail” Belief System
The foundational beliefs of the “doomed to fail” belief system are the following:
- Great entrepreneurs have innate or natural intelligence
- Great ideas or luck are what lead to overnight success stories
- You can reverse engineer another entrepreneur’s success and follow the same steps
These three statements are an indictment on hard work. They devalue strategically focused effort and make a farce out of the daily grind required for sustained success.
The truth is:
- Most great entrepreneurs weren’t born that way. They became great through hard work and sacrifice.
- Ideas and luck have very little impact on sustained success (and there really is no such thing as an overnight success)
- You can’t copy someone else’s path to success even if you know exactly what they did step by step
My research indicates that our belief system is largely unconscious. So the “doomed to fail” belief system will unconsciously drive you to quit too soon when you don’t experience immediate success. This is detrimental.
99% of all successful entrepreneurs are failures before they are successes. If you don’t have the grit to iterate through the failures you will never get to the successes. This grit comes from your belief system.
It’s Time to Step Back to Evaluate Your Belief System
If you are determined to find success through entrepreneurship but continue to struggle, consider taking a step back to evaluate your belief system. This is what I’m doing. I put the launch of my next startup on hold. Instead, I’m using this time to get a master’s degree in “self-knowledge”. So far, what I am learning is game changing.
Limiting beliefs play a significant role in holding people back. These limiting beliefs hover over our heads serving as a glass ceiling. However, they don’t have to. Once you recognize your limiting beliefs, you can take action to change how you think.
Unfortunately, at this time I can’t recommend a specific method to do this. I’m still personally researching and working on several approaches. The reality is that there is a consensus on the existence of limiting beliefs, but not on how to change them. I look forward to one day sharing the results of what worked for me. Until then, here are a few resources to get you on the right path: