Everything’s a Practice
And practice is everything.
For us as entrepreneurs, our practice starts with getting out of bed every morning. Showing up for our practice is the hardest part, and we have to do it every day. Some of us live our work, but that doesn’t mean that showing up is easy. The motivation for showing up for a practice often comes down to a commitment – to yourself, or your alignment to some greater purpose.
The idea that entrepreneurship is a practice actually came from my meditation and yoga practice. I meditated and did yoga for years before I finally committed to a daily practice.
Daily practice changes everything.
It takes it from something you DO to something that is a part of you. And that is exactly how entrepreneurship changes your relationship with work.
Doing your entrepreneurship practice means taking action, and that action is an expression of yourself and your purpose. If you can take action from a place where there is no expectation or attachment of a result, but instead a curiosity, the right outcome will find you.
In my yoga and meditation practice, this is a letting go of “doing it right” and instead a commitment to find the right thing for me to do today, and accept what is. If my hamstrings are too tight for my hands to reach the ground in my forward fold today, that’s OK. It is not about what the pose looks like, it is about the process and finding what feels right in my body today. If my mind is chattering and I have a million thoughts that I can’t detach from during meditation, I’m still practicing meditation. I notice what happens and I find gratitude that sometimes my mind can find peace and that it isn’t the same every day (because that would be boring!). And if I’m launching a new social media campaign about our latest beer and it flops horribly? There is something to learn from that too.
Entrepreneurship is a practice because we can ONLY learn it by doing.
Read all the business books you like, but they won’t make you an entrepreneur.
You only become an entrepreneur by doing (you can’t learn yoga or meditation by reading books either).
Action is part of the practice, but not all of it. Action without reflection will limit your potential. If we are to learn from our practice, we must take action and then we must pause and notice what happens as a result. We must notice how the action has changed us, and we must notice how the world has responded. And we must use that information to shape our practice tomorrow.
Reflection can often be the hardest thing for entrepreneurs to spend time on. Often we are compelled by (and perhaps addicted to) action.
Our society values “busy-ness”. But action without reflection can send us a long way down the wrong path.
Folding too far forward to get the pose right when my hamstrings are tight will eventually cause me an injury. Berating myself for having too many thoughts in my meditation practice will only create more thoughts and keep me from peace. Reflection doesn’t have to be a 3-day retreat in an off-grid cabin in the mountains. It can be a few quiet moments of breathing, and a few thoughts recorded in your notebook or on your phone. Just ask yourself what worked and what didn’t work and why is that important is enough.
So when you get up out of bed this week, remember that it is a practice. And that it is the doing that makes you an entrepreneur, and the noticing and learning that will lead you to freedom and success, whatever that means to you.
