I often hear entrepreneurs tell me,
“I’m going to be doing this forever, this is my life’s work.”
I know by now that this is rarely, if ever, true. The truth is that people change, companies change, markets change… Most businesses are multi-year ventures. Maybe a decade.
Projects, even less.
Each of us has a deeper drive in us… a compass that leads us forward. Entrepreneurs constantly seek growth. This means that rather than staying in the comfort of “OK” stability, they seek to explore more, and do what’s next, what’s new, what’s at the bleeding edge. This growth drive is incompatible with complacency. It ensures that you don’t rest for too long.
Imagine you’re on a beautiful trail. Your compass drives you up the route and you reach the top. Will you stop once you get to the top of the first peak? Or will you keep going?
Your compass points the way forward. It pulls and compels you to break from the known and go back into the unknown.
You will, at some point along the path, begin to feel it point to somewhere new.
Growth and change go hand in hand.
The first response when you have when you start to feel the pull of our inner compass is to grip on tighter and seek out safety and comfort in the past.
Rather than move forward and jump into the unknown, you try and find safety.
You think, “If only I could create x job, y safety, z feeling again.”
You try and recreate what worked before, rather than leaned into exploring something new.
Time keeps moving, and because of that you will change.
When you started your business you you single, now you have a family. You had no resources, now you have some. Or you have new interests that you didn’t have before.
The trap here is to stay complacent trying to hold back the drive within you that’s pulling you forward. Like sand, you grip more tightly and things will slowly filter through the cracks.
No, our only opportunity is to leap, dive back into the unknown, and trust our drive to take us to some new place of opportunity and growth. The good news is this experience is what makes us feel most alive. You can fool ourselves that complacency feels good, but only for so long.
I’m not sure that a “Life’s Work” exists.
A sense of direction, on the other hand, is always with you.