The Reason Why

This week we watched a talk given by Jeff Sandefer entitled "A Hero's Journey". This talk was very impactful to me because it talked a lot about the "why" behind entrepreneurship. When thinking about pursuing the difficult and challenging, yet rewarding course of entrepreneurship, we need to self- assess why we are doing it. If we are doing it for the money or personal gain then that's not the right reason to do it. Having money as the only motivation when things get rough, makes it harder to carry forward. However there are many wonderful reasons that we can decide to pursue entrepreneurship. Whether it's a passion, your family, or for me, my desire to make a positive difference in the world we must have something bigger than money as our reason behind why we pursue entrepreneurship. 

One thing that really struck me that Sandefer said was that at the end of our life we will look back and ask ourselves three questions- Did I accomplish something meaningful? Was I a good person? Who did I love and who loved me? 

At the end of the day, those are the things that really matter. As I pondered these questions I realized how important it is to go on this entrepreneurial journey living by my personal code of conduct and with those questions in mind. Sandefer and people who knew learned this the hard way but we have the privilege of having this knowledge to guide us as we begin this journey. If anything I'm doing in the world of entrepreneurship is not meaningful, makes me a worse person and compromises my standards, or takes me away from my family and damages my relationships, then I'll know that I need to redirect my course. It's so important that we always examine the why behind all that we do so that when this life comes to a close, we will have no regrets and we will know that our life had impact for good.