Will you regret trying and failing, or will you regret never having tried at all?
It took me a long time - and a lot of people telling me they believe in me - to make the leap into entrepreneurship. I’ve had the entrepreneurial bug for a while, and I’ve been helping friends with their job searches and giving entrepreneurs advice for a long time. I actually worked for an entrepreneurial support organization for two years! If anyone was ready to launch a business, it was me. But making the switch from “nonprofit employee who helps entrepreneurs” to “entrepreneur who helps nonprofits and small businesses” wasn’t easy for me.
I’ve said that we need to stop telling marginalized people they have imposter syndrome, and I say it from a place of experience. Imposter syndrome was my excuse for not betting on myself for far too long, but it was only once I reframed my feelings of self-doubt and my fears of uncertainty that I had the confidence to move forward despite them.
I recently listened to an episode of the podcast “How To!” that really helped me crystallize the reframing that I needed to do:
“The way we describe something, or “frame” it, shapes how we decide, think, and act. Consider two treatments for a disease, one with a 5% chance of failure and another with a 95% chance of success. They’re statistically identical treatments, but every one of us will choose the 95% chance of success because we’re wired to be gain-seeking and loss-averse. The reason we’re so uncomfortable with uncertainty is because it tends to register as a loss (or a potential loss) for us.
So how do we take the uncertainty in our lives and reframe it from an anxiety-invoking, loss-producing element, and frame it as possibility? One way is regret minimization. Try this: project yourself out to age 80 and ask yourself, “what will I regret at age 80?” Will you regret trying and failing, or will you regret never having tried at all?”
If you’d like to listen to the full episode, you’ll find it here.
And if you need help making the leap to entrepreneurship or to your dream job, I offer free consultations.
If you’re new here, I’m Shannon Parris, an equity-first management consultant, or as my clients think of me, a trusted, outsourced business partner. I help under-resourced entrepreneurs and nonprofit professionals activate their strategies, optimize their operations, measure and maximize their impact, and foster equitable environments so they can boost their capacity, resolve complex issues, and do the hard work of changing the world.
I plan to use this space to write about my experiences, hopefully in ways that will offer value to my readers. It’s not in my nature to try to sell things. I’m a nonprofit nerd; I just want to help. But what I’m learning about being self-employed is that I get to make choices about how to prioritize my values; I get to do what I want. So this blog may not follow the rules or best practices, but I hope that it does help someone. If there’s a topic you’d like to me to write about, please do let me know.
