Marion's Blog

Falling

On my blog about fitness and health, I posted one recently about “the Art of Falling”. And I mean falling in the most literal sense, falling over, falling off your bike, anything that means unintended and often painful encounters with floors, trees and other hard objects.

It struck me however, that the topic of “Falling” has a lot of analogies with life as an entrepreneur. Whilst you hopefully don’t go about your daily business bouncing into things, you will have ups and downs throughout your life that can be just as impactful in the virtual sense.

Every business owner will know the sense of falling. You may experience it as a tripping over an issue that you had not foreseen, or in the worst case scenario, falling flat on your face with a business that doesn’t run as you had expected.

As I wrote in my fitness blog – you train for events, you train to get fitter, you train to get stronger and better at your chosen sport – but you should consider also training falling. Those that are not afraid of falling, will be more flexible when it comes to that crash and more capable of dealing with the bruises and repercussions.

In business, it is just as important to maintain this elasticity, to be unafraid, to take risks knowing that when you do fall, you won’t get hurt too badly. Whether you do this by building your network and trusting that you have the contacts that will catch you when you need them, or simply by ensuring that you have the mental strength to know that you are capable of riding out every storm – as long as you are not afraid of falling, you will get back on your feet sooner.

Find out what it is that gives you that inner strength and certainty, and then develop it even further. Coming out of a crash – be it physical or other – with merely a bruised ego is always beneficial to you and your business. Agility, confidence and inner strength will help you do just that. And then, to relax in the evening after a hard day’s work, you can get on your bike and go for a nice ride :-)