Pulling ourselves towards ourselves: reflecting on our failures and limitations
|Published
By Zinhle Mncube
In his reflection on the impact of country music, famed singer Willie Nelson once quipped, "Country music is three chords and the truth."
There’s something about country music and the blues' abilities to provide a mirror to life’s situations in a manner that is honest, sombre, and self-aware, yet leaves us with no comfortable conclusions.
We all have moments that remind us that when we think we are taking flight, we are, in fact, making huge leaps whose inevitable conclusion is landing firmly on the ground, our backsides providing the cushion.
My Icarus moment came recently when I found myself in hospital for three days.
There’s something about being in hospital that evokes feelings of helplessness, humility, and loneliness once the nurses, doctors, and loved ones have left.
The air feels that much tenser. The bed seems much bigger and far more distant compared to your neighbouring patient’s bed. And my thoughts (oh, those thoughts) rang louder than a phone you swore you had put on silent in a meeting.
These moments come in waves for entrepreneurs.
Some of us took flight after the first wave, but there are journeymen and women who have weathered fearsome storms and outlasted them.
However, the manner in which they’ve outlasted them is not as clear-cut as we might like to believe. While some have seen success, we must consider the cost of that success.
What was the personal cost of the sale, and are we willing to pay that price again?
Reflecting on our own failures and limitations does not come naturally.
But clearly marking out both the business failure, our personal limitations, and finding the intersections between the two serves as a great springboard for beginning again or pivoting.
This does not mean we should easily shrug off an ‘L’. There are several questions we may need to ask ourselves.
There are seemingly obvious questions we can ask regarding the business: strategy, product-market fit, the positioning of the business, and, of course, funding.
These aspects must be properly explored to aid our entrepreneurial and professional progress. Without such reflection, we throw ourselves into the big, hairy arms of insanity.
The questions I’m most interested in here, however, are the ones concerning ourselves.
These are personal questions linked to our character, integrity, and state of mind.
There’s also the question of our preparedness for the responsibility, burden, and loneliness that comes with entrepreneurship. We cannot ignore the physical toll that entrepreneurship takes.
While many battle scars are worn in the heart and mind, some side effects manifest physically.
Self- or situation-induced sleep deprivation weakens the immune system, raises stress levels, and reduces productivity, countering the very reasons for those sleepless nights.
You’re no less of a person when things, or you, fall apart.
But we must, from time to time, conduct a sober assessment of ourselves.
We face physical and mental barriers that sheer willpower cannot always overcome. Sometimes, like yours truly, our bodies break down, and we must heed the warning signs. Unfortunately, it’s often a bit too late by the time we do.
We must play that stinging chord of truth in our hearts and rummage through the wreckage wrought by our own hands.
To err is human, and our pride must never stand in the way of learning from our failures. Like the composition of many a blues song, from the deep wells of sober reflection, comes shoots of growth, maturity and vigour to successfully chart forward.
Zinhle Mncube is the head of business and partnerships at 22 on Sloane.
BUSINESS REPORT