Peace Is In Staying The Course

Daily Stoic, Jan 15th. Peace is in staying the course.

“Tranquility can’t be grasped except by those who have reached an unwavering and firm power of judgment—the rest constantly fall and rise in their decisions, wavering in a state of alternately rejecting and accepting things. What is the cause of this back and forth? It’s because nothing is clear and they rely on the most uncertain guide—common opinion.”
—SENECA, MORAL LETTERS, 95.57b–58a

Today’s daily stoic really struck a chord with me. During my career as an entrepreneur, I have frequently suffered the “shinny object syndrome”.

If You Build It, They Probably Won’t Even Notice

Having a developer background, I love building things from scratch and creating new products and services.

When I was younger, I believed that “If you build it, they will come” quote.

Thus, specially at the beginning, I would create a product, release it, and then jump to a new project.

Marketing, and acquiring customers have always been my Achilles’ heel. It’s not something I particularly enjoy. As a result, if things didn’t work out right away, I would get nervous, let myself be influenced by others’ opinions and, eventually, abandon the project.

That is ok if you are building stuff for fun, but it’s not the right way of building a business.

Actually, you should never build a product first, and then try to market it. You need to find a market, identify a necessity or an underserved audience, and them build a product that serves them or solves that need.

But the main problem here is how my lack of patience and trust in myself has traditionally sabotaged most of my past businesses.

Peace Is In Staying The Course… And A Successful Business Too

Building a successful business is not an overnight thing, especially for micropreneurs. It’s a process, and takes a lot of time, energy, passion and yes, motivation.

Throughout your path to success, there will be a lots of doubts. You need to be strong-willed to overcome those moments.

There will be people telling you that things are not going to work. Even you will wonder sometimes if you are going in the right direction, or are wasting your time heading to a dead-end.

The fact is, you need to be a little stubborn and probably a little mad too. You need to have a clear vision of what you want to achieve. When people tell you that you are wrong and you are going to fail, you need to ignore them and follow your gut. If you listen to them, you will certainly fail.

Of course, there’s a moment when we all must accept that something is not working and move on. However, that moment is usually a long way past most of the doubts, fears and bad moments.

In my experience, sticking to your path and learning to ignore other people’s opinions brings you clarity and peace. I completely agree with Seneca on that: peace is staying the course.

This doesn’t mean of course being arrogant or thinking that we are always right. We all make mistakes, and need to change things, adjust our strategies or change some things here and there. Nevertheless, keeping a constant course is definitely the way to find success at the end of the road.

Conclusion

Today’s Daily Stoic discusses how “Peace is Staying The Course”, meaning that by being firm in our beliefs and our decisions, we can find peace and tranquility. That’s true not only in our daily lives, but when growing a business too.

Starting a business is a a long process, full of doubts, uncertainty, and fears. We should learn to follow our gut and avoid changing our path on every contradictory opinion. I plan on making this one of my main precepts from now on.

Do you agree with today’s daily stoic? Has being stubborn or ignoring others helped you reach your goals? Or, on the contrary, was a bad decision?

Don’t hesitate to share your story with us in the comments below!