Читать книгу The Resilient Founder. Lessons in Endurance from Startup Entrepreneurs онлайн

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The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

To invert this effect, and calibrate your self-image, try to think about any skill in which you believe you are the best. Adjust that self-score downward by 5X and then start working toward building your skill. As your skill improves – voilà – the self-image gets calibrated magically.

The healthy ego, in fact, can be a founder's greatest ally, an essential resource in changing the world.

Having strong views of their own selves is supremely important for founders. It is indeed a precondition. A vulnerable ego can turn that same strength against its own self, destroying the inner drive. Freud holds the view that when we do not get what we yearn for, we turn against that very object of yearning. Sometimes that object can be our own life.

When Tim Ferris was contemplating suicide, he could well be yearning for something that he could not get. The self-view as a loser soon starts to propagate. The loser's mind then starts to descend into a steady drumbeat: “The world does not need another loser.”