So you want to start a business? Don’t. It’s not meant for you. You’re probably not the type to be an entrepreneur. You don’t have the skills or resilience it takes to start a whole business. It’s better if you find a job and live a nice, stable life.
You’re still here? Hmm. You might after all have some potential for it. Nah, I’m kidding. You’re still a fool for thinking you have the guts to handle failure. Believe me, you will be highly disappointed and unloved by everyone around you.
Are you still reading? Can’t you hear what I’m saying? THIS IS NOT FOR YOU!
But guess what, if you’ve reached this far? Despite all odds, you’re perfect for this. Because being resilient in the face of adversity is one of the most common traits in an entrepreneur. Handling negativity and criticism without any deterrence in your resolve is what makes you successful in achieving your goals.
What is Negativity?
According to the Cambridge dictionary, Negativity means an attitude that is not hopeful or enthusiastic. It has everything to do with one’s mental attitude.
We’ve all heard about the common expression, ‘is the glass half-full or half-empty?’. There’s a reason it is so famous. It resonates with any individual at a personal level and allows them to identify their own attitude in life.
Once you establish your attitude, you will connotate every situation according to it. If you are pessimistic and view the glass as half-empty, it is highly likely that criticism will get the best of you.
Be it a setback or a lucky break, you will always view the things around you in the way you have shaped up your attitude. Hence, negativity can seep into your mind by having a persistently negative attitude.
In the words of the great Jack Sparrow, “The problem is not the problem. The problem is your attitude about the problem. Do you understand?”
How Negativity Affects One’s Life?
So what if you have negativity in your life, you ask? Well, according to a well-established research base surrounding this subject, it has been highlighted to be detrimental to your mental and physical health.
It is known to cause physical and psychological distress that can hinder your optimum functioning capacity. Negativity leads to thoughts and feelings of sadness, worry, frustration, anger and helplessness. All of this contributes to the body experiencing stress.
Now, in certain situations, stress is good. It helps motivate you to change and adapt. It generates a fight-or-flight physiological response in your body that helps it overcome stress.
However, a prolonged experience of stress can leave the body extremely fatigued and exhausted. Hence, negativity generates stress, which in turn leads to burnout, fatigue, mental exhaustion and aggravated mental health issues.
If you’re busy coping up with stress and resisting the negative impacts of negativity in your life, how will you get the time and energy to work on your goals? And believe me, to achieve any goal, one must face challenges.
The Challenges Faced While Starting a Business
Each mission has its challenges, just like each failure has its lessons. People like to form opinions about the world around them. If you’re trying to express your own opinion to the world, facing a backlash from others is inevitable.
Just like this, if you’re trying to start your own business, you will come across the following challenges:
Brutal Criticism
Of course, not everyone is going to like your idea. Not everyone would want to see you succeed. Rather, everyone would try to put you down. And, mostly everyone would try to tell you how to do things their way.
You will be demotivated at each step along your journey to success, as criticising others is much easier than putting in efforts to achieve one’s goals.
Ruthless Competition
You think you’re the only one in the market with a unique idea? Think again. There are hundreds, if not thousands of start-ups forming every year in the world. The only thing that would make you stand out from the competition is your resolve to achieve your goals.
Unrealistic Goal-setting
This may come off as a surprise, as establishing fixed goals that drive you towards achievements is what highlights success. However, a start-up will undergo immense changes in its structure and direction, as it grows bigger.
At the start, we HAVE to make set goals, in order to have clarity over what we want to achieve. But as time passes, our goals need to become more flexible according to the company’s capabilities. Hence, unrealistic goal-setting becomes an obstacle to success.
Incompatible Hiring
We learn through trial and error. You’re meant to make mistakes initially, including bad hirings. Candidates who aren’t suitable for the company culture and vision would pervade your organisation and limit its success. Only through experience, would you understand your organisational needs and find the right people to cater to them.
Financial Mismanagement
With great power, comes greater responsibility. Similarly, as your revenue increases, your expenditure also increases. The more an organisation grows in scale, the more money is needed to manage it.
You will face mismanagement of your finances initially until you find the right help or learn how to manage it according to the growth of the company.
10 Tips to Deal With Negativity in Business
Despite the challenges one is bound to face in their start-up, there are hundreds of successful entrepreneurs in the world. They have survived the turbulence and have managed to establish a strong footing in the market.
How did they do it? Well, many of them went on becoming mentors and coaches for other, sprouting entrepreneurs. They have outlined various tips to deal with the negativity one faces in their businesses:
Accept the challenge
First things first, accept that a bulldozer will drop a pile of challenges on your face right away. Accept that you will be tested and tried and spent. Understand that you will have to go through hardships to achieve success. Once you accept it, you will learn to manage it.
Control your attitude
We’ve already discussed how negativity is viewed on the basis of the attitude you form. Keeping your attitude in check can drastically affect your outlook on life. Controlling your attitude can help you control your emotions, your reactions, your feelings and your thoughts regarding any challenge you may face in life. Furthermore, enjoy a sense of humour in life! Jokes are very important for the stability of your mental health!
Form positive company
Human beings are social animals. They need an emotional connection with other humans. Surrounding yourself with a positive company can help you maintain healthy levels of positivity in life that keeps you motivated in achieving your goals. A positive company will instil a growth mindset in the team, rather than victimise one’s efforts.
Work the hardest
We play by the rulebook here. There is no shortcut to hard work, and the hardest worker gets the most reward. You can not slack away from work and expect to achieve your goals. However, working smart in coherence with working hard can ensure even greater success in your business.
Remove victim mentality
This gets embedded in the people who cannot handle responsibility. They would look for opportunities to shift blame and responsibility on other members. This will never get any job done, and you will waste time and effort trying to blame others. Removing the victim mentality can help you see more clearly and focus on achieving your goals, rather than feeling sorry for yourself. Nobody likes a sore loser.
Have a purpose
Of course, to have a direction, you need a purpose. Establish a purpose and work to embed it in your team. Make your business drive towards a common goal with a positive purpose. A philanthropic element in your business can give you higher feelings of positivity towards your purpose, and more people would like to join in your purpose to satisfy their need to contribute to the world.
Help others regularly
This has nothing to do with the work you do. But it has everything to do with your attitude about your life. Helping others is simply a spiritual resolve. Have faith in the belief that helping others will definitely slingback to you in unimaginable ways. A simple enthusiastic greeting can do wonders for someone who immensely needed it! You will never know the butterfly effect your little welfare actions could have on the world, and in turn, on your business.
Learn from mistakes
This goes without saying, your failures are the most key experiences you will have in your journey to start up a business. If you miss out on those learning opportunities, your failures will amount to nothing. And you will fail, a lot. But it’s all about how you bounce back up and not give up in the fight. Learn from mistakes to excel further than yesterday, and there will come a day when you’ve achieved your goals.
Become self-aware
One of the most important aspects one needs to conquer in a fight is themself. Becoming self-aware allows you to understand your limitations and capabilities. Once you map your own self out, you can easily manage yourself in any situation you come across. Any challenge you’ll face would be a growth opportunity for you, rather than an obstacle you can’t surmount. Be mindful of your emotions to keep your reactions in check, and you will always behave at your best potential.
Have outstanding patience
Resilience and patience go hand-in-hand. Patience is a cornerstone of entrepreneurial spirit, similar to resilience. Build a vast reserve of patience in you for absorbing and digesting any adversity that comes your way. This is a characteristic of the most successful people.
Conclusion
Starting a business does not come easy at all. It has many challenges one needs to surmount in order to achieve what one desires. These challenges shouldn’t be seen as speed breakers, rather opportunities to learn and grow.
With all the tips outlined above, you can easily tackle the negativity that seeps into your mind and organisational culture and look towards success. Be mindful of one fact, the world will try to put you down and never let you catch a break. This does not mean you don’t have it in you. It only means that you’re doing something right, in that the world is trying to resist that change you’re introducing. So, be steadfast, and keep marching forward!