For new entrepreneurs, realizing how outside influences (both positive and negative) impact a person's life and success is a very important lesson. One of the hardest things to deal with is when someone close to you does not share your excitement and enthusiasm about your business dreams and goals. Another is just keeping your mood up when daily life grinds at you. Here are some tips dealing with not letting outside influences hurt your chances for success:
1) With negative people, find out what their motivation is for their negativity.
This is extremely important. There are some people who are just concerned for your well-being. They don't want you to do something they believe is too risky, even though it is a controlled risk from your point-of-view. When it comes down to it, these people just care and need some reassurance and comfort that you're going to be fine. These can sometimes be good people to listen to because they may catch possible problems for you before they even occur, making you a better business owner.
There are other people who are uncomfortable with other people around them succeeding. I was told by one of my business mentors that this is sometimes called the "crabs in a bucket" concept-when crabs are captured, they're placed in a wide-open bucket because the ones on the bottom don't let the ones on top escape.
2) Read books that keep you going and give you hope.
There are thousands of them out there. Sometimes when you're the only entrepreneurial thinker in your family, you need this to keep from feeling like you're alone in what you're trying to accomplish. Books are also a type of mentorship-the author can't be with you one-on-one physically, but a lot of them put their heart into their work to the point you feel like they're right there with you.
3) Watch less TV.
This is funny coming from someone who went to school to go into broadcasting as a career. I'm not saying live in a cave and not know anything that's going on. I'm also not saying you can't watch television at all-I'd be a hypocrite because there several shows my husband and I enjoy watching. The thing is however is that the average person watches anywhere between 20-30 hours of television a week. If you're in that category, you need to realize that overall TV is still a negative influence. Some people may disagree with that, but from personal experience watching less TV has increase our success and our daily mood.
There are shows out there that help people as well as well-written fictional shows, but there are also shows that give you no benefit and people only watch them because it's something to do. If the average person cut their TV viewing by half and spent that 10-15 hours building something that would help them financially, within less than a decade they would probalby have enough money to do the fun things they were watching other people on TV do!
4) Realize that resistance to negative influences develops over time, not overnight.
You have to practice at it for it to work. Just like any other aspect of business, you may make some mistakes. The best thing to do is learn from them and move on. A great side-effect is that you become a positive influence in the lives of other people. Personally I think there's a great need for that in our culture, and it just feels good to be there for other people when you know how important it is to be that way.
I hope these tips have been helpful to you. Best wishes to you in business and in life.
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