Ask IH: Dealing with Social Pressure
Just a bit of context, I'm fresh out of colleges and working on my own project, which I hope will turn into a startup. The challenge is that those in my immediate social circle expect me to find a day job and earn a salary. Entrepreneurship seems like a foreign concept to them. It feels incredibly lonely and isolating at times, sapping my motivation.
Wondering if anyone else faced/is facing the same issue? How do you deal with or managed to overcome it?
The reason your friends expect you to get a steady job and salary is probably just because they care about you. They want you to "succeed" by their standards. They are not trying to crush your dreams.
It is also not that they don't believe in you. It is far more likely that they don't believe in their own ability as entrepreneurs. This makes them uncomfortable "on your behalf", and they want to spare you the pain of failure.
Failure is not the problem. We've all failed thousands of times during our upbringing. As we get older, we are taught that failure is "bad" and that it should be avoided. We are taught to equate failure with shame.
But that is probably not how you feel. You want to be an entrepreneur. You are not ashamed of failure, and you believe that you have what it takes.
As for the isolation and motivation, I tend to focus on why I want to forge my own path. What does my desired victory look and feel like? Where am I, when I eventually succeed?
My own motivations are simple. I want to do things that I am passionate about, leave a job that I dislike and be able to set my own schedule. I don't care about working nights, if I can take my time off while my children are awake. I don't mind waking early to get something done before they wake up. I want to reap the benefits of my own succes; I don't want my employer to take the lions share.
Find out what fuels your fire. Focus on that and know that you have what it takes to succeed.
Thanks for such a detailed comment. Yes I was thinking I was gonna suffer either way, working for myself vs working for someone else. Might as well fight for something that matters to me deeply.
I agree with you. Focusing on the positive helps, as well as remembering why I even embarked on this journey in the first place.
They're crabs in a bucket trying to pull you down.
Why would they want you to try something extraordinary and risk you succeeding and thus making them feel like shit about themselves?
If you can't ignore this peer pressure, you need to ditch them.
This comment was deleted 7 years ago
Appreciate your honest opinion. The uncertainty of it all makes me question my own decision sometimes. I guess that's part and parcel of entrepreneurship. And yes, I'm super thankful to have found this community.