Entrepreneurship is all about positive thinking

“The one battle most people lose is the battle over the fear of failure…try, start, begin…and you will be assured you won the first battle,” said Robert Schuller. This assertion fits in well with this year’s theme for the Global Entrepreneurship Week, which is simple and straight forward; “Take a Step Forward.” As some of us may be aware, the week between November 18-23, every year is designated as global entrepreneurship week. The purpose of this drive is to raise awareness and encourage more people to be entrepreneurs. As short as this year’s theme may be, it speaks volumes, because the biggest challenge for most of us when it comes to venturing into business and entrepreneurial activities, the courage to take a step forward always eludes us! There are various reasons why people fail to take a step forward in engaging in entrepreneurship; fear of failure, lack of the right connections, lack of capital and, above, all the risk to plunge into unknown waters at the expense of our comfort zones!As I was making reflections on this year’s Global Entrepreneurship Week theme, I remembered Robert Schuller’s never surrender principles in his book “Tough Times Never Last, But Tough People Do.” Everybody that has read this book will agree with me that it’s a kind of book that won’t leave you the same! My contribution to this year’s Global Entrepreneurship Week is to share with you Robert’s Never surrender principles– they may help you to take a step forward indeed! To begin with, he says never surrender to farces. The farces he refers to is the mentality of I can’t do’s because of race, family, background and other excuses. Here he gives an example of a young black American, George Johnson who is the inventor of Ultra-sheen we see today who later on became a millionaire despite the racial discrimination and his poor background as a shoeshine boy! Next, he talks of never surrendering our vision to friends. Here he counsels that your friends can give you advice, but they should not have the final say in your dreams. The only person who can make a decision and live with it is you, so do what you believe you must do. Be true to yourself, to your ideals, and to your dreams. His next principle is that we should never surrender to our faults. Faults include; it is all because of my poor family, I have bad experience with this, I once tried business and failed etc. Here he advises that challenges should never become excuses to stop us from trying taking a step of courage forward. That it’s better to accept our faults, shortcomings and imperfections, that it’s all about our attitude that will determine how far we move forward! Never succumb to fears; here he alludes to the Bible and he quotes 2Timothy. 1:7, “God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of sound mind.” He reminds us that it’s better to “attempt doing something great and fail than attempt nothing and succeed.” After all failure doesn’t mean you are a failure…it does mean you haven’t succeeded yet– it all depends on your attitude. The next argument is that we should never surrender to fences. Fences refer to all limiting concepts that you allow to influence your goals and dreams. They are negative self-image perceptions like; I don’t have enough education, I don’t know the right people, I don’t have enough capital to start that business… Robert argues that each of us is capable of achieving something as long we don’t allow self-destructive concepts to dominate our thinking. To support this, he narrates the history of the first external elevator whose idea was initiated by a cleaner when the architects and engineers were planning to raze down the whole building! He concludes his never– surrender principles with a piece of advice “do surrender your vision to one thing– faith”. He believes you need a great deal of faith if you are to succeed in achieving your vision and dreams. “Let faith be in control of every decision you make and every action you take. You do that when you let the positive possibilities set your goals.” Because of space, I may not be able to exhaust all the great ideas in this book; if you are reading this article I would encourage you to grab yourself a copy of this great book wherever you may find it.Finally, if entrepreneurs are made, not born, I would encourage the concerned institutions to intensify entrepreneurship campaign and awareness to reach as many people as possible. The campaign should aim at teaching us skills that we never study from our graduate studies. As a matter of fact, keeping in mind that formal education gives a living, but self education will give us a fortune! The writer is an educationist, author and publisher.