What is the foundation of Resiliency ? 1. Resilience first then happiness. 2. Emotional regulation leads to control of habitual thought patterns, positive mindset stability and happiness. As parents we want to make our children happy. But when we dont engage in helping our children understand an emotion, we teach our children to run away from an emotion. Either we teach our children how not to regulate an emotion, or our fear of confronting an emotion eventually becomes our children’s fear of facing that emotion. Imagine your child telling you “Kids tell me i an not good at sports” as parents we have two choices 1. Ignore the emotion and say “honey you are good at so many other things dont worry ”. Or 2. We can say “lets explore how you feel and develop a specific plan to control the anxiety this is giving you” As Parents we often try to take the emotion away from the child. “Oh you are good at math dont worry if u cant play sports” this statement shows emotional avoidance as parents, and what we are actually saying is “Iam just as scared of that emotion”. We are then set on a path of not building resiliency in our children, we teach them to run away. Our fear becomes their fear. anxiety over an emotion + our parents fear = emotional instability/lack of resiliency Why am i talking about this ? As adults we need to recognize how we deal with our patterns of emotions. What emotions are safe for us , which do i tolerate ? Which do i run away from ? Which ones do i confront ? Which ones debilitate me ? These emotions are the ones that are going to limit you as an entrepreneur. And debilitate your resilience in the world where you need to deal with a high threshold of risk/reward. The unknowns of starting a business are so numerous that our ability to adapt in the midst of startup chaos is critical. Anxiety isnt a feeling, its the experience of wanting to run away from a feeling and you simply cannot run away from a feeling. As entrepreneurs we need to face our emotional landscape head-on to build our resilience.