By Mark Kaplan / May 2, 2022
When considering our lifestyles, we might wonder What is the Entreprenurial Spirit. People live with different levels of acceptable risk. A certain class of people are willing to live with high risk to find out who they are.
The categories of people for purposes of this talk could be divided into those who want predictability, certainty, and security in their lives and those who want to let it all roll to find out what will happen. The latter category is willing to wind up with nothing or back at the start just to have known they tried.
Let’s Go on an Adventure
We see the adventurers on our lives as we read about them in the news, in books, and see them characterized in movies. Why would the characters in Mission Impossible and James Bond put themselves in peril? It is a sense of duty, but only a few would be willing to take such risks for duty if there wasn’t an underlying element of need to explore what is possible.
Adventurers have this need. Edmund Hilary not only was the first to climb Everest but the first to visit both the North and South Poles. We vary in degrees from the safety of our daily lives to the risk of those putting it all on the line. It is about our drive and our need to know more about ourselves.
Exploring the Feelings of the Entrepreneur
Dean Potter, famous soloist rock climber (without ropes) said he climbed for the feelings not to get on top of rocks. What are the feelings? They are expressed many times in the book by Steven Kotler in The Rise of Superman. It chronicles the adventures of extreme athletes and explores why they pit themselves against Nature to achieve the impossible.
Steven Kotler’s exploration is about “flow”. What is flow and why do extreme athletes, adrenaline junkies, and every day entrepreneurs seek it? It is a happiness brain chemical cocktail consisting of hormones, neurotransmitters, and endorphins that sustain our efforts, block the judgmental prefrontal-cortex, and deliver a feeling of bliss not otherwise achievable.
Flow occurs when we engage in an activity in which we have competence and push the limit as little as an additional 4% according to Kotler. In this process, we bar distractions, stimulate the cocktail of happiness brain chemicals and achieve peak performance and creativity. Anyone who regularly pushes their limits for the feelings they experience understands flow.
Achievement Becomes Addicting
One of the side effects of achieving flow is it becomes addicting. Pushing for peak performances is an addiction. Creative types like writers and musicians understand that diving deep into the realm of creativity produces their best work and most enjoyable experience. It is a time when the subconscious connects with all the Universal Intelligence to create peak enjoyment.
Isn’t it amazing that peak performance is coupled with peak enjoyment? It is no wonder those experiencing both return for more. They become serial achievers or at least serial engagers. They engage because of the pleasure they get from exploring who they are and engaging in an activity that produces predictable experiences.
This is an entrepreneurial experience that can occur in any passion. Learning is exploring. Learning can stimulate the same enjoyment without the physical complement of endorphins. Vagabonds travel not only to find new experiences but to experience themselves in those experiences. The self-experience is an important element.
Running five days in the mountains to get from one point to another not only explores what a person is capable of but reveals a lot of beautiful scenery in the process. What a great combination if you love the mountains and love exercise and want to explore who you are.
We can readily recognize how much entrepreneurial spirit we have in our lives. Maybe we have a little. If we have a lot, we don’t have to be told. Maybe our lives need some to be more exciting and to achieve something closer to our potential. Few worthwhile achievements don’t include an element of risk.
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