Table of Contents
Childhood vs Adulthood
As children, we get unconditional love, or at least we perceive the love of our parents as unconditional love. We don’t need to worry about our basic requirements, ie Roof, food, safety. Our mothers know when we are hungry, what we like to eat. Our fathers know the financial budget. We went to school, played, studied, and had no worries of any basic need of life, they were taken care of. So, we remain dependent on our parents even till our late teenage, and now even beyond.
We knew that we could just cry and demand something repeatedly, and our parents would give that to us. They will always forgive us for our small mistakes and continue to protect and provide for us.
So, our perception of the world is pretty much from our parents. The world must love us. The world is good, empathetic, and will take care of us. No matter how many mistakes we make, the world will forgive us. We will be the center point of the world, just as we were the center point of our parents. We also expect the world to not hurt us, not to take away our toys, but to give us.
We face reality in early adolescence and late teenage when we start exploring the world beyond our parents. We find out soon that, everyone is in a race. No one has time for the other. Not many have anything to do with our emotions. Everyone wants the toy that we want. That’s the time when the reality and the expected reality stand north and south. Our world collapses. We do not find the world fit for us.
We feel lonely, avoid people, and become anxious. We limit ourselves from interactions, and we get behind closed doors. Those of us, who are fierce competitors, go out there and chase the toys. However, beyond the chase, we remain lonely.
Lonely
The shock of early adolocense of the harsh reality and true nature of the people around, pretty much sets the course of their rest of the life. Whenever we trust someone, we assume them as our parents, and the trust is like the way we trusted our parents. However, such trust gets broken. We are bullied, mocked, compared, written off. This shock of reality, coupled with recurrent trauma of human experience pushes many of us away from having any sorts of social relationships.
We become lonely, and then we convince ourselves that we are lone wolf. The reality though is, that such words are merely self-comforting statement by means of which we convince ourselves that we are enough to sail through the life. Though, if it was to be anything closer to truth, humans wouldn’t have been a social animal at the first place.
Entrepreneurs
As entrepreneurs, we go through a very tough and often a very lonly journey. How to hire great people, pay them well, look after their families, their aspirations, customers and customer satisfaction, investors, market and so many other things.
In this pursuit, we lose ourselves somewhere. We fail to recognize and acknowledge that we too exist and our happiness, aspirations matter too. That we also deserve some rest and some light moments to share in life.
Then when the going gets really tough, we crumble and then start losing it all. Because the pressure takes the best out of us. Piles of sleepless nights, suppressed and hidden emotions, sabotaging self goals and loves get better out of us one day or the other. From financing, to operations, from people management to sales and marketing, an entrepreneur has to take care of many things. It is quite obvious then that so many different things are impossible by a single person to do efficiently and over a long period of time.
Therefore the entrepreneurs burns out a lot of energy. Being a lone wolf sounds good, but has no benefit in the reality. The constant burning and pushing would result in severe impairment in the body to supply the needed energy. Also, constant stress over a decade would mean that body won’t have enough adrenaline and cortisol to deal with the stress after some times. This will elevate the risk of Diabetes and Hypertension. Needless to say, Insomnia and Sleep Apnea are common byproduct of lone-wolf entrepreneurship.
Inner Circle
An inner circle is a close group of associates who essentially share a common philosophy, and in most cases a common vision with the entrepreneur. This group of people share their intellectual learning and other resources to create an emotional and philosophical bonding. This bonding is like a seamlessly connected powerful computers, which as a single unit acts like a supercomputer. There are problem solvers, doers, resourceful personnel, narrator, or any other driven individuals. Often following are the traits of the individuals that creates the inner circle of an entrepreneur
- Growth mindset and extremely growth driven.
- Risk takers. Most of the individuals in the inner circle loves to take challenges in life.
- Learners. One thing that is common amongst all the growth mindset individuals is their drive for learning. They want to learn from others in the circle and adopt the best practices.
- Receptive. Because, an inner circle is a bonding, where conversation and coordination is main, they are extremely receptive to the new ideas and joint projects.
- Skill. Most of the individuals often comes with some or the other skillsets, often complimentory to the entrepreneur.
- Vast Age Bracket. Mostly, the inner circle comprises of a wide range of individuals, who comes with wisdom and energy.
- Doers. There are ofcourse doers and then complainers. Inner circle often forms by people who are doers, as an entrepreneur creates a thick skin against the complainers.
In a nutshee, the companions in the inner circles are more than just merely friends to hangout with. They are kind of a strong intellectual and philosophical pillar of the entrepreneur.
This circle is built over years, and many a times decades. People comes and goes. Some remains for lifetime. Their cumilitive intellect and knowledge helps each of these individuals to solve a lot of tough challenges of life.
How Inner Circle Helps an Entrepreneur
The day when the energy runs out and when the burn out of the inhuman hard work gets better off an entrepreneur, that day, we no more love what we do. Things that we have been enjoying feels like poison. There is no one to talk to because no one will understand our situation. Further, there is a pressure of people’s judgement. The adolescence loneliness comes back to hit the entrepreneur. He feels childish, he feels alone, he feels powerless and vulnerable.
Having an inner circle makes the entrepreneur feels safe as a child. He has companions and he has people who are like him. He has people to talk to, and to give him energy when he feels low. He has people who genuinely cares for him and not just the advice mongers. This takes away the pressure and stress of loneliness. It helps the Entrepreneur to get back to life.
To save yourself from this, create an inner circle for yourself. This won’t be work of a day. But you will build this over a period of time. Some will come and some go, but a core cycle will stay. This circle may take a decade, but that will hold you and your business. That’s your lifeline. Build it.
How can we help?
An entrepreneur takes care of many lives, and has very little time to look after himself. We provide the entrepreneur a trusted inner circle like feeling with our team. We offer to take one worry away of the entrepreneur, that is his mental, emotional, and overall health. Once confident that “I have someone who is looking after me”, he uses the energy to do what he does best. Often, you do want to create this personal support system way before it is too late.
