Part 4: Five Questions Entrepreneurs Must Ask

For the first weeks of summer every year after school gets out, I feel totally lost. Like time just doesn’t exist and it takes me about 2 weeks or so to adjust to the no school schedule. . .

So, this week has been rather awkward. I have managed to actually show up to all the calls I had scheduled, though! LOL Even early as usual.

But there are a lot of other things that just didn’t happen. And one of those is sending you this email – part 3 in the Five Questions Every Entrepreneur Must Ask series. . .

We’ve covered Questions 4 (how did I get here) and 5 (where am I going) so far and today we’re going to dive into Question 1: Who Am I?

This is the fundamental question we all must ask. And if self development is important to you and you want to continue to grow and improve yourself and the world around you throughout your life, it’s a question you’ll find yourself asking time and time again.

In my work as a coach, I’ve witnessed many people going passively through life on autopilot. People who identify as their pain or their circumstances. Because let’s be real – pain and suffering gives you a perspective identity that outlines how you view the world and yourself. It ties you to something.

But when you set out on a path of self-discovery and seeking, your first goal is often to establish a purpose. Why am I here? What brings meaning to my life?

The thing is, identifying in that way ties you to something outside of you.

In the youth workshops I do for One Generation Peace Project, we talk about each of these questions in the context of 4 areas:

in the world at large
in my community
in my family
to myself

So, who am I in the world at large? How flexible is my identity? Who am I if I am not that? Who do I want to be? Is it innate or do I get to choose?

And we dig into these fundamental questions with a writing activity. So, get out your journal or open a new doc on your computer and think them through. Describe who you are, who you want to be in the 4 areas.

Answer for yourself whether who you are is innate within your being or if you get to choose.

Let me tell you something here – the question of whether it’s innate or you get to choose is really where the good stuff is. It can be extremely triggering, though. Nonetheless, I encourage you to go deep with it and truly discover who you are and who you want to be.

One of the things I’ve come to know is that suffering is a result of not knowing your true identity. Until you know your true self, you will believe the identities that are bestowed upon you, those identities outside of you:

Mother or Father
Spouse
Your professional title
Passenger on a train

And while you might be those names, they are not YOU.

You are an eternal soul. You are also human.

And – spoiler alert – you DO get to choose who you are at any given moment.That’s why asking who do I want to be? is such a good question to help you get where you really want to go.

Go within.

“The truth is something that burns. It burns off dead wood. And people don’t like having the dead wood burnt off often because they’re 95 percent dead wood. Burning dead wood means shedding all the elements of you that are no longer worthy of the pursuits that you value. As you do that, you shape yourself evermore precisely into something that can withstand the tragedy of life and act as a beacon to the world. So let the death of what is insufficient about you occur and then wait for your rebirth” — Jordan B Peterson.

I’ll be back again in a few days with the next question in the series.

Enjoy your weekend!