Don’t Take it Personally

Resilience refers to the capacity to bounce-back from failures, rejection, or other similar events. It’s one of the most important predictors of psychological and emotional good health- and, I’d submit, one of the most important qualities of successful entrepreneurs. While we all like to succeed, and we especially like to succeed in the first try, long-time business owners notice that, often, from the most spectacular mistakes come the most spectacular successes. One of the best ways to develop resilience is to learn to allow situations to unfold- without taking them personally. Although events can sometimes lead us to feel bad, angry, sad, annoyed, or overwhelmed, part of developing resilience is learning how to view these situations in a broader context or experience- perhaps looking at them as holographic representations of a larger issue, or as an opening to birth new clarity, or, simply, as a test or challenge to get through before the desired rewards appear. Whatever language or metaphor you apply, the capacity to let go of negatives, view rejections as a one-minute occurrence rather than a statement of the whole, and the capacity to allow others to be who they are, where they are, when they are will go a long way to building your personal and entrepreneurial resilience.