Entrepreneurship is hard but you can’t die
steveblank.com
steveblank.com
Steve's message is the same thing that I took from my experiences, and why my (non-Navy) colleagues always cite me as being "calm in the center of a storm". No matter how crazy or insane things get at work, I know there's no chance that if I screw up that 100+ people would die. It absolutely puts perspective on problems. :)
Training programs like the National Outdoor Leadership School can be a good jump start into the leadership aspects of those sports.
Ever since then when getting ready for a concert where I'm not the soloist, I can just tell myself "What can I possibly do wrong that would be worse than that?" and the tension goes away.
Its funny, failure in front of an audience is rarely fatal, but a huge fear for many.
That's the interesting thing about the human brain and our reactions to things. When compared rationally what happened to you seems trivial. But in your brain it was the worse thing in the world on the scale of a true disaster. Reminds me of situations where one has a health scare or a hypochondria before knowing the true details of their illness. The feeling you get is as if you are headed toward death and others sometimes laugh at how out of proportion a reaction is to the evidence at hand.
A start-up changes a person in the same way a war does -
trauma, triumph, battle, and blood.
This, however, is an excellent way to ground yourself. Even though I've (fortunately) never had to be in the environment described here, this anecdote makes you appreciate what you have and where you are.
// In memory of four of my firestation colleagues, two, motorbike accidents (after 72 hours duty), one (a chief): heart attack 9 month after retirement, one dead in operation, rescuing the corpse of a missing speleodiver. http://www.plongeesout.com/portraits/portrait/maignan%20nico... he was 27 and the coolest, nicest guy you can think of.//
http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2012/08/a-class-of-entrepren...
It is that latter situation that keeps me awake at nights being an entrepreneur: that other people are relying on me... that in some way, I am responsible for them and their families... I often ask "am I worthy of this?".
It's similar to your current fears, but still on a larger scale.
http://money.cnn.com/2011/11/14/technology/diaspora_cofounde...
I told him how I didn't like photographing weddings because it was too stressful and tiring. He laughed and said "no one is going to shoot you, though"
But something that stands to "kill you right now" is a bit of a different beast to most of us. And in that regard, Steve is exactly right... put the startup in context: No matter how stressful it is, or what's going on, it's till not life and death in the sense of how most people use that term.
My own version of this comes from having been a volunteer firefighter for about a decade.. a period during which I had at least 3 experiences where I came very close to being seriously injured or killed (and was lucky enough to escape all 3 unscathed). I was also a 911 dispatcher during part of that same period, so I spent a lot of time up close and personal with literal "life and death" situations. When you've been there, it changes the way you look at the day in, day out stuff that goes on in business. Yeah, it's important... but it's never that important.
The consequences of this stuff could actually be life and death. That said, the risk for most people is quite low.
If he was 30 with those habits, he might have, indeed died.
I liked this post by Steve. However one thing to keep in mind is that people can suffer greatly in their mind as a result of their wrong actions, failures and the consequences of their mistakes. For many many years. While the current culture in SV (and on HN) celebrates success but also attaboy's some of the failures there is an entire other world out there (spouses, children, parents) that create pressure on stress on and individual that fails and only really care about success.
When you're 18 and single, death doesn't scare you much because you don't have a spouse and kids. No one's being let down in that way. It will be rough for your parents, but teenagers usually aren't thinking about that, because we're programmed (either by genetics or culture; not sure which) to be a bit selfish at that age.
The effects of the career game (not just one business) are, on the other hand, deeply generational once you have kids and the die is cast. If you fuck it up, your kids won't have the connections and resources they need to thrive and they end up as mid-grade meat for society to munch on. This means they will have worse careers, and the effect propagate. The poor know what the stakes are, and the rich are terrified of being the one to drop the ball.
Dying at 18 when single means you don't have any kids. That's a lot less scarier to me than having kids and a mediocre career and having it affect them. That said, what would keep me from a war is not the fear of death, but the fear of injury, especially the psychiatric kind.
The article starts with this quote:
We Sleep Peaceably In Our Beds At Night Only Because
Rough Men Stand Ready To Do Violence On Our Behalf
That said, turning the experience of making sure bombers can safely carpet bomb Vietnam into a coming-of-age story yielding uplifting thoughts about entrepreneurship steps into bizarre territory. Like an Ayn Randesque version of Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow.
The honour of the professional soldier in a modern western democracy is that they don't pick and choose the wars they fight in, they trust the judgement of the rest of us to figure that out. A mercenary picks the people he shoots at.
This is why it is so incredibly important to not only choose the wars we fight in - and the governments that start them - very carefully, but to ensure that our servicemen and women are respected appropriately.
There may come a time when a particular war is essential for our survival. We better have the people and skills to win it.
All soldiers should be honoured for the fact that they volunteer for very dangerous activities, usually will little understanding of when and where those activities will be.
Your point regarding post-war sign ups is valid, but like I said, if you want to fight wars you can just join blackwater et al. If you want to serve your country you can join the nation's armed forces. There is an element in public service in the soldier that should be commended.