Written by: Miriam Petra, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
An entrepreneur's perspective on failure, identity, and outdated business paradigms.
Entrepreneurs play a critical and crucial role in their ability to challenge the status quo, driving regional to global social and economic growth, creating the vast majority of new jobs, and forging products and services that solve key problems and ameliorate circumstances.
A number of researchers have taken on the task to decipher our special entrepreneurial power — ranging from a force of creativity, innovation, vision, resilience, amongst other cognitive, emotional and behavioral strengths, traits, and vulnerabilities.
The Dark Side of Genius
According to Michael A. Freeman,
"While much is known about the personality traits of successful entrepreneurs, little is known about the mental health characteristics that may be associated with entrepreneurial success and failure,"
suggesting that the characteristics which compel us, entrepreneurs, to start our ventures have the tendency to also be responsible for entrepreneurs to fall apart and our companies to fail.
As Aristotle put it,
"No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness".
Thought leaders, innovators, risk-takers, game changers are driven by an inner force that most will never experience.
Whether we feel ready or not, we navigate the most diverse challenges others would not dare to even look at, we carry more responsibility than others could ever cope with, and are willing to look beyond every defined "out-of-comfort-zone" to seek true innovation, despite being called unrealistic or even crazy by literally everyone around us.
"Being an entrepreneur has been characterized as one of the most stressful jobs, with average earnings that are lower than if one were to work as a paid employee," as a study from Aston University found.
One could say, the permanent nature of our daily work and life is filled with enormous pressure and is highly stressful.
Success and Failure are an Entrepreneurs Shadow
While successful entrepreneurs are celebrated as heroes, valued in society, and their companies highly acknowledged, the amount of struggle behind the scenes is mostly hidden in the narrative of business and entrepreneurship, especially when it comes to the mental and emotional struggle.
Psychologists have already agreed that an entrepreneur's so valued out-of-the-norm strengths are also behaviors of symptoms of a range of mental disorders - from depression, anxiety, chronic stress, despair, bipolar disorder, suicidal thinking, amongst others.
And when taking the term "mental illness" further into a holistic perspective, according to Dr. Nicole LePera,
"it is not about treating mental illness, but about treating trauma responses".
While I had the privilege of top-level education in entrepreneurship, business, and management at leading universities in Europe and the USA, took part in noteworthy international entrepreneurial incubators, was a member of the most valued business organizations and mastermind circles, and had very expensive and renowned consultancies on board - the closest I ever got to the term "mental and emotional wellbeing" or "trauma responses" was: work-life-balance and mindset.
The Lost Pages of the Story Tale of Entrepreneurship are the Key to it All.
While most of my entrepreneurial journey was very lonely at the beginning, I remember being so proud to finally be part of the EO mastermind, sitting in a room full of other inspiring entrepreneurs, being able to openly talk about all the vulnerable struggles I was faced with, without the so-called "impression management" or fear of showing weaknesses stakeholders could play against me.
At that moment, listening to all others speak of their struggles, I realized - "wow, we are actually all the same... we are all struggling with similar things, we all have our own fears, we all perceive personal limits... we are all human."
Being an entrepreneur, a thought leader, a boss, a role model is often idealized to a point where we feel we aren't allowed to be as vulnerable as "normal people" anymore.
It was the first time in years that I was allowed to look at myself as a human with all the mental, emotional, deeply disturbing roller coaster going on behind the scenes.
Yet, the narrative was still limited to a set of "mindset strategies" and "best work-life balance principles according to social and psychological norms."
While these principles gave me support, hope, and some level of guidance - they were like a plaster on a wound that wasn't spoken about.
The Missing Piece Decides Our Destiny
At 28, I had grown 3 companies to multiple 6 and 7 figures, met my soulmate and became a mom.
I was managing a team of 36; my brands won multiple awards, I was part of renowned Business Masterminds in Europe, had elite mentors from google, amazon, Ernst & Young, amongst a number of other business consultants and honors. I raised millions in investments and hustled hard for success.
At 30, seemingly out of the blue, my life exploded. I crashed and failed miserably - while everyone was watching.
A major IT project in the company I had devoted my life to failed; we lost millions and filed for bankruptcy.
I was diagnosed with functional abdominal pain syndrome, adrenal fatigue, and later on with PTSD from the pressure of juggling a newborn and growing company.
The conflicts in my closest family had grown to such an extent. Nobody could sit together at the table.
I had lost all my savings, we had to move out of our house, and my relationship was on the brink of divorce.
Even more severe. It seemed like I had lost myself.
“You cannot outperform your self-identity.”
Failure — Why it Means so Much and Nothing at all
As Ute Stephan in the Academy of Management Perspectives puts it, "for entrepreneurs, work is also an expression of their personality — arguably much more so than is the case for any other occupation."
It took a few months until after the bankruptcy that I was forced on my journey of uncovering the root cause of my major failure, as I was still forcefully trying to stick all the pieces back together.
I was used to "just functioning," despite how I was feeling, continuing in the rat-race of hustling through it all, making sure all parties are attended to - the staff, the investors, the lawyers, the family — and telling everyone around me, "it's okay, I'll fix it, I've got a new plan, everything will turn out great."
However, the truth, I didn't even want to commit to myself was, I felt worthless, despair, anger, fearful, hopeless, and had no more reason to get out of bed.
Nothing meant anything to me anymore. I felt all those years of hard work were completely wasted and didn't have a spark of motivation left inside me.
"Not all storms come to disrupt your life. Some come to clear your path."
The awareness of knowing failure is part of the game of entrepreneurship (and life) when you're sitting right in the middle of it is great, but obviously, that information alone and some motivational words or quotes won't get you through it.
When you've truly hit your rock bottom, then you'll hardly be able to get out of it without a helping hand.
Lessons of Overcoming Failure
I was desperately looking for support and help to overcome the severe struggles everywhere.
And first things first in the healing process — You need to literally sit in your shit first and never skip this step.
My journey of making sense of it all led me to 2 weeks of ZEN fasting in complete silence.
What I learned is that it's not the fear or pain of the negative event itself that's so devastating, but rather the meaning we attach to failure and what we make it mean about us.
“The right person can do everything wrong, it will always turn out right. The wrong person can do everything right, it will always turn out wrong.” — ZEN Saying
This lesson was a paradigm shift for me.
It even takes the commonly known 80% mindset / 20% strategy success rule to a completely new level.
The Message Behind your Hidden Veil
Today, I’ve overcome major failure in many areas of my life, cleared millions in personal debt, realigned with my true purpose, and regained joy, health, love, and flow in life and my businesses.
So what's the missing message on those lost pages in our storybooks that decides over success or failure?
It's our very own personal human component that governs all our outcomes: our subconscious belief system that governs 95% of what we think, say, feel, do and believe.
Specifically, what's hidden behind a veil of consciousness, deep-rooted trauma, and beliefs we aren't aware of, yet this is what controls everything we create in life and business.
This is exactly why we can apply all the best blueprint strategies, have the perfect business plan, the most innovative idea, hire the most brilliant minds, pay the best consultants, thrive in some areas; and still have problems that seem to persist like superglue, invisible blocks we just can't seem to overcome, patterns of sabotage we battle in all different facets, and can ultimately also miserably fail.
Research has shown, between the ages of 0-7 years, 80% of our beliefs are already installed.
Thus, the trauma incidents during childhood, in which we acquired our belief system, need to be revealed, dealt with, and reprogrammed in order to clear the seemingly invisible blocks.
Trauma-Informed Entrepreneurs are Less Likely to Struggle and Fail in Business and Life
Coming back to the study of the University of California, knowing that especially entrepreneurs are 72% more prone to mental illness and disorders and linking the findings to what we know today about the subconscious mind and trauma responses suggests a potent inference: entrepreneurs need to be even more aware of their personal subconscious paradigms and operating system.
Today, subconscious mindset work has become an indispensable training component of world-class sports icons. Like Jack Nicklaus, the world-famous golfer, explains he would not even pick up his cub until he has a crystal clear image of the golf ball flying through the air, hitting the ground, and rolling on the screen of his mind, calling it “going to the movies.”
As the mere vastness and diversity of socio-economic environments and circumstances an entrepreneur is confronted with goes beyond any basic conditions, and one could say we are constantly confronted with our demons to a much greater extent.
An Entrepreneurs Psyche - The First and Most Important Business Lesson
Mastering our inner world of thoughts, beliefs, and emotions is not an option — it should become the 1 business lesson; as “preparing the mind, body, and spirit for entrepreneurship is like preparing the mind, body, and spirit for the Olympics,” says Suzanne Mulvehill in her book Employee to Entrepreneur.
And when topping it off with the sheer simplicity of what my mentor, Marisa Peer, has taught me - that any successful, positive outcome is tied to our awareness of personal worthiness and subconscious identity - it is literally a matter of saving lives with this important narrative.
In every event in life, there is a positive experience — lesson, growth, learning, a higher purpose to challenge for you to discover, become stronger, more resilient, deal with adversity and challenges. And it's a chance to shine a light on your shadows, your limits, your limiting beliefs, and your trauma keeping you stuck.
As a certified entrepreneurs’ therapist, I’ve specialized in supporting leaders to overcome severe obstacles and failure, aligning them to thrive with purpose, ease, and flow.
I created the signature fool-proof Bx3 Transformational Method to overcome massive failure once and for all, so you can realign to thrive with limitless ease.
Miriam Petra, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Miriam Petra is your facilitator for deep and profound transformation. She is a trained therapist and serial entrepreneur, mentoring thought leaders to step into their full potential to create their dream lifestyle of vitality, impact, income, and freedom they desire.
By aligning the subconscious mind and eliminating root causes for any issue, fast and lasting transformation is achieved for any area of their life, without the hustle, overwhelm, and trade-offs between personal and professional life, yet with joy, ease, and abundance.
Miriam believes high-performing, successful and aligned leaders, entrepreneurs, and executives are changing the course of history. Healthy & ethically led businesses are the primary sources of innovation, bringing great solutions for more sustainable living on this planet for us and all future generations to come.
Going through the highs and lows of being a multiple business owner, having overcome major bankruptcy and severe financial loss, as well as healing from chronic illness, depression and family division, she has become an expert in overcoming failure through her signature Bx3 method and subconscious therapy.
Through powerful subconscious transformation on deep levels, she helps high achievers from around the world align to thrive and transform their lives from the inside out. She teaches you the research-backed tools to harness the power of your mind, body, and spirit to live your best life & be the best version of yourself for yourself, your life, your loved ones.
In the past 12 years of building businesses, spending $600k+ on her education & training, working with the best coaches, international consultants, and hypnotherapists, it wasn’t until she started working with the subconscious mind and spiritual principle that her life & business truly shifted.
"Your wellbeing & subconscious identity are directly connected to your level of performance & lasting success."
