Are you born to live a happy life?

In the first class of Fundamentals of Entrepreneurial Management, professor Zott did a little experiment with us. He made students to list the attributes that they deem important to be an entrepreneur. Then, he asked if someone in the classroom has all the attributes listed. Apparently, nobody has. According to professor and his colleagues study, there is no unique bundle of attributes appears to be “required” for entrepreneurial activities. Entrepreneurs and no-entrepreneurs are, in general, similar in their attributes. However, we often hear people saying that “I’m not born to be an entrepreneur”.

Similarly, I often hear people saying that “I’m not good at management” or “I’m too shy to be a good public speaker”, or “he is too aggressive to be a good leader”, etc. Yet, have you even think of this question: “are you born to live?” What a silly question, right? I think not many people have doubted whether or not s/he has the right personality to live a good life, because there is no right or wrong with personality. The key to live a happy life is to know your strength and work on the weaknesses.

As professor Zott says, entrepreneurs are not born but made, I would say, happy life is not born with but made by yourself.

Assess the opportunities and just choose one of them

There are so many things I want to do in my life. I wanted to be a basketball player, a writer, a businessman, but none of this came true. I often change my mind, making me difficult to build my knowledge and skills in certain area. The reason that I change from time to time is that I always say this is too difficult, there is no opportunity for me.

I was similar to those people who say “I’d like to start my business, but I don’t see good opportunities”. The thing is that opportunities don’t wait for you. Entrepreneurs need to create opportunities but not wait for opportunities.

Have a “scientific” approach to choose life projects.

There is no such thing called “the best opportunity”, but we do need to have a solid system to evaluate those opportunities. On class, professor Zott taught us his famous “OUTSIDE-IMPACTS” criteria for evaluating a business opportunity.

I think that we should also have some solid criteria when we are evaluating life opportunities. For me, this is still something I try to come up with; however, there is no standards for this. The key point is that everyone should come up with those criteria by really thinking it through.

Indeed, there are some common point which everyone should take into account. Choose one basing one personal needs.

10% idea and 90% execute

One of the most influential phrase to me during my MBA journey comes from professor Massimo. He said, “everyone can have a version, what’s important is how do you come across”. Then, I heard similar idea during the entrepreneurship class when an alumni was sharing his entrepreneurial experience. He said, “Entrepreneurship is 10% idea and 90% execution.” Good ideas can change the world only if they are executed.

If we think of life, it’s the same. Everyone can have an idea of becoming a person that he wants to be. However, life isn’t only defined by what we think but also what you do in day to day life, which requires more efforts and resilience.