With just a couple days of the semester remaining, I'm considering all that I have learned in B183: Intro to Entrepreneurship. It's been an interesting class, to say the least. I didn't know what to expect, really. At first, I was somewhat surprised by how much personal reflection and introspection was required of me. Now I am grateful for all of that time considering and pondering on my abilities, desires, needs, and passions. I'm also thankful for the opportunity and challenge to determine and state my core values, create my own set of ethical guardrails, and declare a personal code of ethics. Each of these challenges, along with other academic learning about entrepreneurship have made this class experience a good and worthwhile one.
If I were to give advice to someone seeking it for the purposes of benefiting their own entrepreneurial journey, I would tell them that they first need to know themselves before they can go about the entrepreneurial business of making the world a better place. That isn't to say that one needs to uncover every layer or mystery about themselves, but to know in their core who they are in the universe. For me, it's knowing that I am a daughter of God with limitless potential. I am a woman capable of much good. I know that I have something marvelous to offer the world, that my presence here on earth is to both my advantage and the advantage of others who come into contact with me. In knowing who I am, I also know who everyone else is: a son or daughter of God, with limitless potential and power to create amazing things and achieve the unimaginable. By first having at least a bit of a grip on one's true self, a proper foundation is in place for beginning an entrepreneurial journey.
Once we know who we are, we can better determine and define what we will and won't do. Knowing and actively remembering that we come from the Divine, we are more likely to behave with a higher sense of decorum. When commencing an entrepreneurial journey, it's so important to set ethical guardrails in place along either side of the path to where we want to go. Ethical guardrails are the "I will never" actions that keep us from becoming immoral and behaving badly in business and in life. Staying within our ethical guardrails ensures that we keep a clear conscience as we go about the business of making the world a better place and bettering our own personal lives too.
For a budding entrepreneur, I'd highly advise letting the mind dream. Purposely make time in the day to ponder, meditate, and allow the spirit within our bodies to work its magic, so to say. Each of us has limitless potential, but we stifle ourselves. We allow others to diminish our creative light. We end up settling with and believing the sad platitudes in life; that it is what it is. Dreaming is important because it allows us to be more in touch with the spiritual and less cumbered by the physical. We are spirits in mortal flesh. One day our flesh will be perfected/immortal, but until then, our flesh is a mortal overlay that can drown out what our spirits already know. Dreaming is detachment from flesh in a way. Dreaming can help us "remember" what our spirits already knew from before we were born. God sent us here with gifts, blessings, talents, and testimonies, and if we dare to dream, we can put all those things beautifully into motion for good. Dreaming allows us to gravitate toward our God-given desires, abilities, and inclinations. This is how we can change the world for the better.
President Thomas S. Monson said,
"What an exciting life is available to each one of us today! We can be explorers in spirit with a mandate to make this world better by discovering improved ways of living and doing things. God left the world unfinished for man to work his skill. He left the electricity in the cloud, the oil in the earth. He left the rivers unbridged and the forests unfelled, and the cities unbuilt. God gives to man the challenge of raw materials, not the ease of finished things. He leaves the pictures unpainted and the music unsung and the problems unsolved that man might know the joys and glories of creation."By giving ourselves permission to dream and then do, we become the creators that God designed us to be in this life.
One last bit of advice I'd offer to someone wanting to spread their entrepreneurial wings is to seek to know their true calling in life. Knowing who we are at our cores is crucial in knowing what it is that we are to do with ourselves. Adhering to a firm and true set of ethics in life will allow for clearer vision. With clear eyes and a solid foundation of self, knowing what to do with ourselves as we walk ahead in business gives great purpose and satisfaction in life. Figuring out what we do better than anyone else, and loving that about ourselves is how we begin to understand our life's callings. When we can turn our righteous endeavors and passions into something marketable that will positively change the world, then we have truly gotten a good grip on our life's calling.
However, it is important to know that not everyone who has a desire to be an entrepreneur can or will succeed at being an entrepreneur. Not every entrepreneurial mind has been given the talents, skills, or blessings to be an entrepreneur. The markets in life don't necessarily always want or will always pay for our genius and creativity. But no matter what, it is important and necessary that in order to have a happy and full life, we must know who we truly are. We must choose to live a higher law. We must do that which God gave us talents, blessings, and abilities to do. And if it so happens that the entrepreneurial calling isn't ours, we should take heart. In a BYU devotional on June 1, 2010, Jeffrey Thompson said,
"Finding your calling in life may not be a matter of finding the one right job. Instead, it may be that your calling is to bring your unique spiritual gifts to whatever position the Lord blesses you with."In the end, we need to do the very best we can with what we have, and express gratitude in all things, every day. For the entrepreneur, there is no slacking or coasting our way to success and happiness all the while. An entrepreneur's journey is intentional and personal, and it will always make the entrepreneur see themselves and life in a more true and revealing light.
