Greg Faxon argues that entrepreneurs are under unrealistic pressure to love their business constantly and to derive continuous happiness from work. He reframes passion by noting its etymology (Latin passio = suffering), encourages acceptance of work as sometimes painful, and advocates building a life outside of business rather than chasing a mythical, permanent state of bliss. The piece mixes critique, personal observation, and practical reframing, ending with a brief call-to-action to subscribe and share.
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Your business can just be a job. Seriously. It doesn't have to be your soul's calling. We're often told that entrepreneurship is about building a life and business that you love. Sounds pretty great, right? It certainly sounds better than build and rebuild a life in business that sometimes you love, but other times is a pain in the ass. And at the end of the day, you're honestly just grateful to curl up in bed and read Harry Potter. There's a lot of pressure on entrepreneurs to be beacons of success and happiness. If you're not on a beach in Bali helping Oprah connect with her inner child, you should probably just give up now. I mean, do you even coach, bro? Or if you haven't automated and delegated every single last thing in your business, you're obviously not a real entrepreneur. I mean, you're basically no different from a 9 to 5 employee at that point, trading time for money like an idiot. Okay, I'm obviously joking. The truth is, no job is enjoyable 100% of the time. I'm sure even Tony Robbins wakes up some days and is just like, screw this. I can't unleash the power within today. And that's okay. Work isn't supposed to be this everlasting source of happiness and fulfillment. In fact, it's this expectation of work that actually makes us miserable. One client forgets to write us a testimonial, and we decide to change our entire business because of it. We're like, oh, no, I must have chosen the wrong niche. I gotta start everything from scratch again. But what if it was fine for things to just be a pain in the ass sometimes? A while back, I learned something interesting. So it turns out that the root of the word passion is passio, which. Which means suffering. So passion actually means suffering. Instead of trying to eliminate the suffering of entrepreneurship, what if you actually found meaning in the suffering? Or what if. And I know this is radical, what if you didn't even try to find meaning at all? What if you created an actual life outside of work? What if you found hobbies? What if you made friends? Look, there's nothing wrong with wanting to improve your business. But have you ever noticed that no matter how much progress you make, you never quite arrive when you're just starting out? You think, okay, if I could just get one paid client, I would be so happy. But once you have that first client, now you want a full client roster. And then when you get a full client roster, then you want a million dollar business, and it just goes on and on and on. It's sort of like the hiker who gets to the top of one mountain just to realize that there's another peak beyond that. And of course, this is part of the thrill of entrepreneurship. There's always new challenges to overcome. There's always more to learn. But I'm not here to give you a pep talk about enjoying the journey. Because to be honest, entrepreneurship is a pain in the ass. As soon as your marketing starts working, something starts breaking down on the delivery side, and then you get delivery handled and your sales conversion rate gets lower. It's like playing whack a mole, always trying to fix a new problem every single day. But one way to make this whole thing less painful is just to accept that your life and your business is constantly evolving. Any equilibrium that you achieve is temporary. It's like the quote from Brent Beschour, all businesses are loosely functioning disasters, and some are profitable despite it. I think we'd all sleep better at night if we let go of the idea that if we somehow changed our business, we'd become happy. Same thing with starting a new business or getting a job somewhere else. The grass is always greener. Even if you end up selling your business for a bunch of money, those people often become bored, anxious, and depressed because they have nothing to do anymore. There's no way out. Perfect bliss does not await you at the next business milestone. Just more suffering. When we truly accept this, we're free. And maybe that's the freedom we've been looking for this whole time. If you like this video, I hope you'll hit subscribe and leave a comment below. Or if you can think of someone, another entrepreneur, who'd benefit from this, I hope you'll consider sharing it with them. Thank you.
