50 Ways Entrepreneurship Will Change Your Life
I’ve seen tons of articles talking about what personality and skills you need to become an entrepreneur, but while certain qualities can help you become more successful as an entrepreneur, anybody can become one. The experience of being an entrepreneur changes you, fundamentally, from the way you think to the way you act and the way you want to live your life. Most of the time it’s for the better, and occasionally for the worse, but entrepreneurship will change your life. Here are 50 ways:
1. You become passionate about working. Success in entrepreneurship depends on following your passions.
2. You wonder how you ever held a normal job. Each day, that typical office-based 9-to-5 lifestyle seems stranger and less appealing to you.
3. You think critically about everything. Being in control makes you evaluate everything, from your morning coffee to the arrangement of your living room furniture.
4. New experiences become a commodity. You crave new experiences because you know they’re a gateway to new insights.
5. Everything can turn into an idea. Every object, situation, and experience you encounter becomes a potential platform for a new idea.
6. You see the potential in everyone. You see the strengths and weaknesses in people, sometimes immediately, and imagine their great potential.
7. You can reduce most things to numbers (if you choose to). Entrepreneurs have to objectively analyze very subjective topics — the result is your ability to objectively analyze almost everything.
8. You get a new perspective on common situations. Some things seem more important, and others seem wholly unimportant.
9. You don’t care about small failures. When you stumble, make a mistake, or lose something, it somehow doesn’t seem as bad.
10. You embrace criticism and feedback. When someone points out something you’re doing wrong, you embrace it as an opportunity to improve.
11. You support other people’s passions. You know the value of passion and support it in others.
12. You appreciate personal freedom more. Once you’ve tasted it, there’s no going back.
13. You make decisions easier. After making 100 decisions a day, all other decisions in life seem easy.
14. Your problems seem smaller. Your daily crises pale in comparison to what you face as a company leader.
15. Your brain never turns off. You find yourself thinking and brainstorming all the time, with no reprieve.
16. You constantly want to learn new skills. You’re thrilled at the notion of how much you have left to learn.
17. You read more than you ever did before. Books, news, articles… you love to absorb new information.
18. You want to meet new people more than ever. You realize the value of new connections, and love to meet interesting new people.
19. You can’t just do nothing. If you feel like you aren’t making progress at something, you go crazy.
20. Everything becomes a challenge of productivity. You want to make everything as efficient as possible.
21. You want to tinker with everything. Your life is a giant experiment.
22. You have an easier time speaking in public. The pressure is off, you become more confident, and speaking becomes easier.
23. You work harder for things. You know your rewards are proportional to the work you put in, so you work harder at everything.
24. You aren’t afraid to say no. When you don’t want to do something, you don’t feel pressure to say yes.
25. You feel accomplished. Success or failure, you’re proud of what you tried.
26. You never feel bored. Even in dull moments, you can find yourself entertained with complex thoughts and brainstorming patterns.
27. You feel in control of your own destiny. You truly feel in charge of your life.
28. You see patterns in chaos. That crazy traffic can be reduced down to a series of actions and reactions from reasonable drivers in specific conditions.
29. You care less about your comfort zone. You’ve broken your comfort zone so many times it no longer exists.
30. You’re more confident in your abilities. You feel sure of yourself in certain key areas.
31. You want to experiment all the time. Everything is alive, and everything can be changed for the better.
32. You think more about your community. If your business relies on your community, you think more about giving back.
33. You see “work” and “fun” as non-mutually exclusive. You know there’s only a difference if you make one.
34. You start to become a teacher. You want to share your knowledge and experience with others.
35. You become an even better student. You’re always eager to learn something new, from anyone who wants to teach it.
36. You take more risks. You aren’t as afraid to fail because you know failure is never the end.
37. You aren’t afraid to dream bigger. You demand more for yourself.
38. You encourage others to dream bigger. You demand more for others.
39. You construct your own routines. You enjoy creating processes and systems for yourself.
40. You care more about time. You realize the true value of time, and that time truly does equal money.
41. You spend more time with people you like. You know who’s valuable to you, and you don’t waste your time with anyone else.
42. You challenge the status quo. You aren’t afraid to break the rules.
43. You take more initiative to build great environments. At home and at work, you want to create places where you feel good.
44. You see everything as a game. Everything can be broken down into rules, actions, and objectives.
45. You see everything as a win. Even failure is a learning opportunity.
46. You respect anybody who works hard at anything. You know the value of work ethic.
47. You try to innovate everywhere. You want to try new things all the time.
48. You love solving puzzles — even more. Puzzles are especially thrilling because you know the satisfaction of finding solutions.
49. Everything seems faster paced. The pressure of being an entrepreneur bleeds into other areas of your life.
50. You remain calm in tense situations. Nothing seems as intimidating as it did before you became an entrepreneur.
I, for one, love how my entrepreneurial experience has changed my life. My days have more meaning, my mind seems sharper, and everything becomes easier to understand in a new perspective.
For more content like this, be sure to check out my podcast, The Entrepreneur Cast!
