Moving On: 'The Painful but Liberating Lessons of a Career Failure'
I've been a small scale entrepreneur since at least 15 years ago. Or I should say, I had learned to take the first few critical steps in becoming an entrepreneur as a child when I followed a good friend's suggestion that we earn money by acting as guides and guards for people who would park their cars while hearing the Sunday mass in a nearby church. Boy, we did earn some good money that time, which we would continue to do for the next few weekends. I would eventually study in the school that's affiliated with the church in high school, which experience gave me more valuable lessons in many areas in life that I make good use of up to now.
In my career as an entrepreneur, I've been a hog raiser, a beauty salon owner, a retailer of a variety of services and products, a freelance writer and author, a pawnshop owners, a masseur who chooses his clients if they're fun to be with, a lender, an equity investor, a keen saver of pennies that earn compound interest, a business consultant, an online marketer and seller, among other endeavors. I've an MBA degree, which I finished while I was still employed full time as well as engaged in various businesses. I'm not a traditional planner in the usual sense when I build and pursue a particular business, and so I make plans as I go along with my life. And I'm an adventurer at heart. And I can see myself getting into other businesses in the years to come (until I finally die).
I've failed and continue to fail, which can be daunting at times, from these entrepreneurial endeavors I have. But I get easily bored, and so I continue to move on. I can write a book on these failures; those of you who may interested to know more about these failures may write me so I'll know which areas I have to write and share here.
I don't know why I get a sense that literature, including news reports like the one quoted in the title of this blog posting (check: The Painful but Liberating Lessons of a Career Failure from the NYT) tend to give a bad taste to your tongue after reading such materials. Maybe this can be due to the usual negative connotation to the word 'failure', which actually is the other half of success. I was also surprised to find out that you can always put in plural form the word 'failure' whereas you'll get alerts when you do something similar to the word 'success'. This means or this directly suggests that we would usually have innumerable failures before we can savor the sweet taste of success in our endeavors.
Something similar is very true with entrepreneurship, which is also a career choice for many out there who would like to make a living. I've chosen it as a path to make money and make a grand way of living. I've moved on from being a full time employee ever since I came here in the USA; I've nothing against being employed, per se. In fact, I make use of the lessons I learned while I was still employed full time whenever I write on something related to business and career. In my career as an entrepreneur, I've had my own share of terrible failures. And I continue to have them.
Among other failures, I fail to attract, keep and sustain relationships with people I like to be emotionally involved with. This could be mainly due to the sense of financial instability people, who I'm grateful to have been attracted to me, but have concerns (although they usually don't tell directly) have over my sources of income as an entrepreneur. Of course, a lot of them who have been involved with me will deny my observation outright, which is normal as it is strategic not to be blunt when you're starting relationships. Actually, I've grown to realize that being an entrepreneur has allowed me to focus my love and attention only to those who are brave and strong more than enough to be involved with an entrepreneur like myself. Most of them who eventually become involved with me, romantically or otherwise, are entrepreneurs themselves, are self-reliant, have high levels of self-confidence, and are intrinsically motivated (that is, they are turned on by their deep seated desires that they recognize, mold, grow, and develop as part and parcel of themselves as individuals).
Of course, your own success is easy and convenient to measure by using the amount of money you are earning in exchange for the work you are willing to do each day. But the same can't be completely truthful when it comes to measuring success in entrepreneurship, which case is something similar with how we should measure success among those involved in the arts. Being full time employed and earning a regular income are no-brainer choices if you want to make some money. And if you want to be a slave for others, then continue being one. I choose not to---I rather be a slave to my own interests, which include building, growing and making profits from my own businesses. And being full time employed these days, you'll be in for a rough ride. Employers will continue to squeeze so much work from you for the little pay they give you (they can't help themselves; they've been facing a very tough business environment out there, which most of them won't care to admit openly but you've probably heard about but have not paid much serious attention to)----you might as well use your energy, time, efforts in learning to grow your own business, and start employing yourself (in increments of time you still have on your hands, and you'll eventually find yourself becoming an entrepreneur full time, or most of the time).
Such case of measuring success without using money terms can be used as well with how we have to measure the success of parents who endeavor to raise children (if they happen or have been blessed to have) to become responsible and useful members of society. If we focus on money terms in measuring success in any kind of endeavor, we'll end up shooting ourselves in the foot. You know, deep inside of your being, that your value is beyond money terms (although it's really convenient churning out money figures just to make a point to others that you've been a success story yourself!).
At the most and what we could best do at most often as we make sense of and seek meaning behind our individual failures each day we're still given the chance to live, we need to continue learning from the mistakes we continue to make, as well as those others who were ahead of us. These mistakes are available everywhere, and some wise-d people have turned them into tools in pursuing profitable careers as well. And these mistakes are sincere warning signals, which we can use to serve our respective purposes if we're into entrepreneurship. It's always up to us if we'll make the choice to learn and continue to move on. Or we can choose the other path.
In my career as an entrepreneur, I've been a hog raiser, a beauty salon owner, a retailer of a variety of services and products, a freelance writer and author, a pawnshop owners, a masseur who chooses his clients if they're fun to be with, a lender, an equity investor, a keen saver of pennies that earn compound interest, a business consultant, an online marketer and seller, among other endeavors. I've an MBA degree, which I finished while I was still employed full time as well as engaged in various businesses. I'm not a traditional planner in the usual sense when I build and pursue a particular business, and so I make plans as I go along with my life. And I'm an adventurer at heart. And I can see myself getting into other businesses in the years to come (until I finally die).
I've failed and continue to fail, which can be daunting at times, from these entrepreneurial endeavors I have. But I get easily bored, and so I continue to move on. I can write a book on these failures; those of you who may interested to know more about these failures may write me so I'll know which areas I have to write and share here.
I don't know why I get a sense that literature, including news reports like the one quoted in the title of this blog posting (check: The Painful but Liberating Lessons of a Career Failure from the NYT) tend to give a bad taste to your tongue after reading such materials. Maybe this can be due to the usual negative connotation to the word 'failure', which actually is the other half of success. I was also surprised to find out that you can always put in plural form the word 'failure' whereas you'll get alerts when you do something similar to the word 'success'. This means or this directly suggests that we would usually have innumerable failures before we can savor the sweet taste of success in our endeavors.
Something similar is very true with entrepreneurship, which is also a career choice for many out there who would like to make a living. I've chosen it as a path to make money and make a grand way of living. I've moved on from being a full time employee ever since I came here in the USA; I've nothing against being employed, per se. In fact, I make use of the lessons I learned while I was still employed full time whenever I write on something related to business and career. In my career as an entrepreneur, I've had my own share of terrible failures. And I continue to have them.
Among other failures, I fail to attract, keep and sustain relationships with people I like to be emotionally involved with. This could be mainly due to the sense of financial instability people, who I'm grateful to have been attracted to me, but have concerns (although they usually don't tell directly) have over my sources of income as an entrepreneur. Of course, a lot of them who have been involved with me will deny my observation outright, which is normal as it is strategic not to be blunt when you're starting relationships. Actually, I've grown to realize that being an entrepreneur has allowed me to focus my love and attention only to those who are brave and strong more than enough to be involved with an entrepreneur like myself. Most of them who eventually become involved with me, romantically or otherwise, are entrepreneurs themselves, are self-reliant, have high levels of self-confidence, and are intrinsically motivated (that is, they are turned on by their deep seated desires that they recognize, mold, grow, and develop as part and parcel of themselves as individuals).
Of course, your own success is easy and convenient to measure by using the amount of money you are earning in exchange for the work you are willing to do each day. But the same can't be completely truthful when it comes to measuring success in entrepreneurship, which case is something similar with how we should measure success among those involved in the arts. Being full time employed and earning a regular income are no-brainer choices if you want to make some money. And if you want to be a slave for others, then continue being one. I choose not to---I rather be a slave to my own interests, which include building, growing and making profits from my own businesses. And being full time employed these days, you'll be in for a rough ride. Employers will continue to squeeze so much work from you for the little pay they give you (they can't help themselves; they've been facing a very tough business environment out there, which most of them won't care to admit openly but you've probably heard about but have not paid much serious attention to)----you might as well use your energy, time, efforts in learning to grow your own business, and start employing yourself (in increments of time you still have on your hands, and you'll eventually find yourself becoming an entrepreneur full time, or most of the time).
Such case of measuring success without using money terms can be used as well with how we have to measure the success of parents who endeavor to raise children (if they happen or have been blessed to have) to become responsible and useful members of society. If we focus on money terms in measuring success in any kind of endeavor, we'll end up shooting ourselves in the foot. You know, deep inside of your being, that your value is beyond money terms (although it's really convenient churning out money figures just to make a point to others that you've been a success story yourself!).
At the most and what we could best do at most often as we make sense of and seek meaning behind our individual failures each day we're still given the chance to live, we need to continue learning from the mistakes we continue to make, as well as those others who were ahead of us. These mistakes are available everywhere, and some wise-d people have turned them into tools in pursuing profitable careers as well. And these mistakes are sincere warning signals, which we can use to serve our respective purposes if we're into entrepreneurship. It's always up to us if we'll make the choice to learn and continue to move on. Or we can choose the other path.
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