Starting a Business – How to Safely Stretch Out of Your Comfort Zone

When you start a business, you are called upon to stretch your comfort zones quite a bit, especially if you came from a more structured environment such as a corporate job or a professional service.

A lot of entrepreneurship is about experimentation: finding your “winning formula” in business involves experimenting and testing to find the market you are meant to serve, the products or services that they want, and the marketing that does the best job at reaching them.

Any scientist will tell you that you need to have an open mind when you test, so entrepreneurs need to be willing to loosen up and be flexible.

That’s hard to do if you’re full of rigid assumptions, expectations, or fear of failing.

But how do you let go and loosen up when your future is on the line?

The old and well-researched practice of yoga gives us an answer.

The other day I was in a class and we were doing an exercise designed to open up our hip joints. The first thing we did was a movement that contracted the same muscles that we would stretch a moment later.

The instructor said that the joints would be willing to loosen up more after they experienced their strength.

Following the principle of this yoga exercise, you’ll be much more able to relax into finding your success formula if you first feel your strength. So how do you do that?

One way is to give yourself an opportunity to experience some small successes instead of banking exclusively on a grandiose project.

Another is finding ways to have some cash flow coming in during your start-up to keep having the experience of receiving money. That might mean keep the job for a while or finding contract work.

Yet another is to interact with at least one person who will remind you how competent you are when you start doubting yourself, and do it in such a way that you believe it rather than think they’re just saying it because they love you. That often means that it’s best to not rely solely on family or close friends, but to have a mastermind buddy, mentor or coach.

Helping others is a surefire way of feeling better about your value to the world. That might mean being involved in community work, or just lending a hand to friends.

What does that have to do with you business? Lots, because as an entrepreneur, you are your business and if you feel better, you’ll do much better.

Finally, if you are considering doing business online, then you would be well-advised to learn from someone who gives you the big picture and shows you how to start making some money from the beginning from a solid business perspective rather than through a quick scheme that you don’t really understand.