Starting a business is an exciting but also challenging journey. One of the biggest obstacles entrepreneurs face is fear. Francisco Báez M., with his vast experience in coaching and personal development, offers us effective strategies to manage these fears in his talk at the Millennia Atlantic University School of Business. In this article, we will explore his teachings and how to apply them on the path of entrepreneurship.
Managing Fear When Starting Your Business: Insights from Francisco Báez M’s MAU Talk
About Francisco Báez M.
With 23 years of experience in more than 8 countries, Francisco Báez M. has dedicated himself to contributing to human and business development. His approach combines coaching with spirituality, creating extraordinary evolution processes. He is a Commercial Engineer with training in coaching, therapy, transformational hypnosis, and more, which gives him a unique perspective on personal and professional development.
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Understanding the Role of Fear in Entrepreneurship
When embarking on the entrepreneurial journey, one of the most significant and complex challenges is managing fear. Fear is a constant companion, even when we are filled with excitement and anticipation about the extraordinary things we aim to create. But where does this fear come from, and how can we effectively manage it?
The Conscious and the Unconscious
We are only conscious of about 5% of our being, while the remaining 95% shapes our reality. This unconscious part harbors patterns, beliefs, and programs formed from personal experiences and societal influences. Our interpretations of life, shaped during childhood and adolescence, play a crucial role in determining our success or failure in entrepreneurship.
The Journey of Self-Acceptance and World Perception
Our journey involves questioning how we fit into the world and our interpretation of it. Do we see a world that welcomes us, one where we can thrive in abundance or scarcity? These patterns reinforce beliefs formed in childhood, shaping our view of the world as either challenging or supportive.
Inherited Fears and Collective Consciousness
Our fears are not just personal; they are inherited from up to seven generations back in our family history. Additionally, we are influenced by the collective consciousness of our environment, city, or country. Recognizing and understanding these fears is the first step towards transcending them and creating extraordinary outcomes.
The Multidimensional Human Experience
Our life experience is not just physical; it encompasses various dimensions:
- Physical Body: Our physical presence, including our ego, forms part of our life experience.
- Energetic Body: Our energy level influences our physical strength and ability to face challenges.
- Emotional Body: Our emotions play a crucial role in our life experiences.
- Mental Body: Our thoughts and mindset directly impact our emotions, energy, and outcomes.
- Spiritual Body: Recognizing and understanding our essence is key to creating extraordinary results.
The Power of Thought in Shaping Reality
Our thoughts are the foundation of our reality. They generate actions, which in turn create emotions and energy, culminating in tangible results. It’s essential to nourish our minds with positive thoughts to manifest the reality we desire.
Overcoming Ego and Fear
The ego often manifests as fear and guilt, leading us to seek blame externally. Overcoming the ego involves stopping self-criticism, being gentle and patient with ourselves, and recognizing our unique journey without comparing ourselves to others.
The Formula for Conquering Fear
To conquer fear in entrepreneurship, we must:
- Stop self-criticism and embrace our efforts.
- Avoid provoking fear and focus on positive outcomes.
- Be gentle, kind, and patient with ourselves and others.
- Recognize and support ourselves, finding the necessary resources for our projects.
- Embrace our unique journey and love ourselves unconditionally.
Fear of entrepreneurship is inevitable, but our relationship with it can change. By understanding and managing our multidimensional selves, nourishing our minds with positive thoughts, and overcoming the ego, we can transform fear into a powerful motivator. This approach not only leads to personal growth but also paves the way for extraordinary entrepreneurial success.
Thank you for joining us in this exploration of managing fear in entrepreneurship, inspired by Francisco Báez M’s enlightening talk. Remember, the journey to extraordinary achievements begins with understanding and managing our inner fears.
Transcript:
“Thank you to all the people who will be watching us live and also later on. The idea of what we are going to create today is about managing this fear. But what happens to us when we are looking at that project when we are starting our business? A lot of situations arise that are part of that entrepreneurship.
One of the most important and probably most complex situations is that we never stop feeling fear, even when we have expectations or when we want to create extraordinary things. We also have this illusion of everything that will happen when we start a business. But fear is always present. Yes, and for this reason, today we want to explain to you where this process of fear comes from.
What happens around us and how can we manage it? We are only aware of 5% of what we are, and the remaining 95% is what is generating the experience that is now part of our reality. From there, we start to consider this 5% that we are conscious of. It’s everything we take into account as part of those administrative skills, marketing, and sales.
In short, everything we are looking for. But in that 95% are all the patterns, beliefs, and programs that we have received and that are generated at a personal level. Yes, from the experiences we have had since we were little and the conversations that our environment has transmitted to us. The experiences we have had over this time and period are recorded in this unconscious, in the personal unconscious.
When we start to shape the interpretations of life that surround us, it is what will determine success or failure. Later, when we start this entrepreneurship, we are not only talking about our childhood but also about when we are teenagers, a stage in which we already have countless situations that also mark our lives.
And is it then when we start to ask ourselves what is happening to me and how the world accepts me? What do I do to fit in? What is happening to me? And definitely, what is my interpretation of the world I live in? I understand that it is a world that welcomes me, a world in which I feel comfortable.
I understand that it is a world that allows me to develop in abundance or, probably, in scarcity. And then, these patterns also reinforce the beliefs that I formed in my childhood. This is how I start to interpret the world and begin to program it, labeling it as complicated or easy, wondering if it will be possible to develop in this world or if I feel stopped and controlled by different fears.
Remember that in our unconscious we have these three aspects: the personal, the family, and the collective. In addition, we carry the burden of what happened with our family, and it is said that up to seven generations back they inherit what we live now. We start to see that the fears of the grandparents, the fears that at some point were part of the life of dad and mom, we also inherit them.
In addition to what we have at a personal and family level, we inherit different characteristics of the environment that is part of our experience, of the place where we live, of the city to which we belong, or, probably, of the country and the collective situation that we are living. Therefore, to be able to take this very important step, what we want to do is to become fully aware of this fear and start to understand what is the situation I am living in right now.
What is the fear I have and what is this trying to tell me? Why? So that, responsibly, I take charge of my experience and at that moment realize what? Now I have the possibility to transcend fear and definitely create extraordinary things in my life. Just as I inherited all these emotions, I also started to inherit to my family the emotions that I cannot process. And that’s when we can see that different cycles repeat themselves. This goes very much hand in hand with what we are working on emotionally. Once we have identified everything that is happening at an unconscious level, what we want is to see if there is something beyond what happens.
What is happening with us in this experience we are having, and I refer to this experience we call life, is that currently, our focus is on the physical body. When we come to this plane, to what we call life, we arrive with something fundamental to live this experience: our ego.
The ego is this physical part that is part of my experience. In fact, my body right now is precisely part of that experience where there is an ego. This is the ego and what physically surrounds me, also forming part of this ego system. It is then when we want to see that the physical aspect distracts me from many other fundamental aspects and begin to focus all my attention on this physical experience.
In addition to the physical body, I have an energetic body. All this energy is part of the success or failure also in my project. In fact, when your energy is high, your physical body is robust and can face any situation because it is in its power. But what happens when your energy is low?
It is then that we can see that the physical body weakens. But in addition to this energetic body, we have the emotional body, which speaks of all the emotions we are experiencing. In addition to this emotional body, we have the next body, which is the mental body. With the mental body and the mind, we start to determine the emotion, the energy, and therefore, the result.
Therefore, within the experience we have in creating results, it is fundamental that we start to observe how we manage our thoughts and how we make them aligned with that project and with the entrepreneurship I want to carry out. The last body, not being the least important, but on the contrary, the essence and the most important in us is the spiritual body. It is when we recognize and understand what we are in essence and from there we can create an extraordinary result in our life to carry out any creation process.
For us, it is important to focus on our thoughts. Thought precisely determines what we want to create. Why? Because before thought, there is nothing. And this thought is what happens, directly affecting how we live at an emotional level. Thought generates an action and that action generates an emotion.
That emotion causes an energy, an energy that will undoubtedly give a result tomorrow. Yes, something that we can physically measure, feel, see, hold, and experience. That is the result we want, because obviously, when we are starting this entrepreneurship in our life, when we live this process, we have the opportunity to look at and connect with each of these beliefs that tell us: “I can”, “I am capable”, “I deserve it”, “this is possible”, or probably “I can’t”, “I am not capable”, “I don’t deserve it”, “this is impossible”.
And when that happens, we definitely see it reflected in our results. What is the ego? Imagine that image of the little devil that is present in our life, because the ego, in addition to being this character that comes and stands on our shoulders like in cartoons, giving us an interpretation of the world we live in, also becomes the contrast. The ego, which is all the time talking to us and telling us: “You won’t be able to. Look how many other people did the same as you and failed. You will fail too. Look at this, you lack resources, and if you venture out and can’t…”. Not only that, but the ego looks for our weak points, what we even see as values, as principles.
Why? Because it knows where to get in you take things personally and start to enter a process in which, far from advancing, you see how your life stops. That ego manifests itself through extremely important aspects. The first is separation. The ego gains strength when we start to live in a process of separation.
What do I mean by this? When we believe ourselves isolated from the world we live in. Not only that, but once I live the separation, I start to emit judgments, and the judgments I make are tremendously strong and complex. And look how the first person I judge when I start a business is myself, or probably this egotistical or egocentric belief, in which I believe myself more than others, makes me not see clearly what I am living.
And then, if suddenly I crash to the ground, look how the ego plays a fundamental role and all this produces fear and guilt. Therefore, if right now you are feeling fear in your life, it is the ego that is managing your life and handles you as if you were a puppet. If you are looking for culprits for the experience you are having, that is also the work of the ego.
Culprits? What can it be? “It’s that the government doesn’t help me”, “it’s that the university I don’t know how much”, “it’s that my parents”, “it’s that my bosses”, “it’s that the political situation”, “it’s that the thing is complex”, “it’s that I don’t know how many things”… and I look for culprits outside of me. That too is the ego. Remember, the ego makes you see solutions outside of you and not inside you.
One of the fundamental things is that when we harbor fear and guilt in our lives, we weaken ourselves. But why is this fundamental when it comes to entrepreneurship? Because if emotionally we are not strong, what happens? If mentally we are not strong, what happens? Any situation, or probably any wind that comes as a test, if some issue, as part of the problems or experiences we live when starting a business, comes and moves me in such a way that it knocks me down and I fail to see the lesson behind it, or the opportunity to discover new resources, or the opportunity to discover myself also in a different position. Yes, and that is part of the experience we have when starting a business. We have four fundamental steps that speak precisely of this process in which we can start to see how this thought is the origin. Thought is the first level that creates the reality we are living.
Therefore, it is important, just as every day we feed ourselves and look for the best to nourish our body, to start looking at what I do to nourish my mind and realize that everything I bring to my mind will be part of the reality I am living. Once I think, once I create, I take an action, and this action is what allows us to achieve results.
And this action is fundamental. Why? Because again, right now I think I can run and I give, from my thought, that order to my body and my body runs. Therefore, this thought leads us to an action, and that action will determine and generate an emotion. How we live this situation generates an emotion.
The memories we have in our lives do not necessarily go hand in hand with what we apparently see within the mental movie we make for ourselves. But what happens is that the emotion is what gives room for an interpretation. And that often happens to us: suddenly I have a place that I remember with great affection and I say “I liked traveling there, look how nice I had it”.
And that place is extremely magical, special, and extraordinary. And when I return after a while, maybe after a few years, I see that it has not been so nice. However, what happens? If it is what I tell you, when we have an emotion and a thought, together they will create a result. And that’s when we can start to see that this is part of this very important law which is the law of cause and effect, in which I am the cause.
And the effect is everything that is happening inside me, to me, around me. Therefore, everything I have inside me is what generates the life I create. Everything I have inside me is what generates the result I get. One of the things we want to start looking at is that a person who has extraordinary results in their life is a person who loves themselves.
Why? Because of the abundance? Because of the success? Because of the extraordinary relationships? Why is entrepreneurship and your business successful and extraordinary? It is a consequence of self-love. The human being, here and now, does not want to learn new things. He wants to confirm what he already knows. Because we were taught that the most important thing is to be right, and that is one of the problems.
Listen to me well. Yes? This is one of the reasons. Is it one of the edges that make us fail in our projects? Because sometimes I am so attached to being right that I don’t want to see absolutely anything else. Why? Because the ego and reason what they do is blind me. And I can’t see clearly the different options that allow me to grow.
These fundamental points are part of the conclusion of what we have talked about. And this here, look, is a formula for you to start overcoming fear and take that so important step to become the extraordinary human being that you are. The first fundamental step is that you stop all criticism, and stop criticizing yourself whether you did it well or not.
Remember that as a child you once painted a picture and went outside the lines, but you had fun, and that made you improve your technique and become better every time. And this beautiful opportunity to be happy goes hand in hand with what? With what you are doing, far from criticizing it, what you do is what?
Well, elevate it. What you do is to exalt it, what you do is to build it and build yourself up. The next thing is not to provoke fear. We as human beings are constantly provoking fears and we invent a movie of everything that is happening and we see ghosts in everything. The probability of these kinds of things happening is minimal.
Yes, but what happens when we provoke that fear and give it so much attention that we end up making it a reality? The next thing has to do with being gentle, kind, and patient. Be gentle with yourself and also with others. Remember to be gentle and kind to the people around you. The next thing is to be kind to your mind when you have a fatalistic thought or face a complex situation.
What do you want to tell your mind? ‘Hey, it’s okay.’ Not only that, but recognize yourself. This part is fundamental because many of us recognize others, but we do not recognize ourselves. The next thing is to support yourself. How do you support yourself? By finding the necessary resources to carry out your project.
The next thing is to learn to recognize that each of us has our own style. Therefore, do not compare yourself with others; be yourself. The next thing is to be loving with your negative side when you make a mistake, yes, when something does not work, treat yourself with the same love and respect that you would with the most important person in your life.
The next thing, which is fundamental, is to look at yourself in the mirror because that is your motivation. I invite you to make every day a moment when you look at yourself face to face and find your motivation in yourself. And when you look in the mirror, what to say? ‘Today I am going to be an extraordinary man, today I am going to be an extraordinary woman, today I am going to be an extraordinary entrepreneur. For whom? For me.’ Looking at yourself in the mirror. ‘Today I commit to giving my best. Today I commit to whatever it is, but it’s with me because I love myself.’ And finally, love yourself and do it now, giving yourself permission to build the result you are looking for.
Fear is not going to disappear. What is going to change is the way we relate to fear. But when fear comes, what to do? Far from fearing, what you want is to look at yourself in the mirror and say: ‘This is my moment to show myself how much I love myself.’ And this goes for my infinite thanks.
Well obviously, thanks for following us. Infinite thanks for giving us the opportunity to be here now with you. Thank you, Jairo. Thank you to this prestigious university and for everything they are indeed doing for the community and their students.”