Managing your own psychology is the hardest skill for any founder As acclaimed investor and entrepreneur Ben Horowitz once stated, managing your own psychology is the hardest skill for any founder or CEO. In The Resilient Founder: Lessons in Endurance from Startup Entrepreneurs, Mahendra Ramsinghani gathers insights from over a hundred founders to deliver an intuitive and insightful guide to understanding our psychology and navigating the psychological pressures of startup leadership.
Venture backed companies are expected to grow at high velocity, raise large amounts of capital, build teams effectively to achieve unicorn, no decacorn status. Yet the journey is long, filled with uncertainties, extremities and black swan events. It can wear out the best and the brightest. On the outside, a CEO can demonstrate sheer bravado, an invincible spirit as they behead dragons in the business battlefield. And on the inside, they deal with their dark side, subconscious struggles, emotional barriers, shame or guilt. The role of a founder can be lonely, frustrating and filled with high-highs and low-lows - all of this leading to anxiety, depression even suicide.
This book addresses the fundamentals of understanding our own inner workings and explores practical ways of overcoming our inner hurdles. Filled with simple, yet concrete strategies, lessons and insights, founders and business leaders can work with stress, anxiety, and other mental challenges presented by the life of an entrepreneur.
In this book, readers will learn to:
- Understand the basics of founder psychology, and how our inner workings can help or hurt us
- The importance of building a healthy ego, leading to resilience
- Draw on the lessons of established startup leaders on how to wrestle with their own mental and emotional challenges
Written for founders, entrepreneurs and Chief Executive Officers, The Resilient Founder leads a gentle path to self-awareness, compassionate soul-care and inner wellbeing. Entrepreneur, Investor and author Brad Feld calls this book "dynamite". Case studies, philosophical perspectives and a generous dose of poetry is sprinkled across this book, which can be a companion for all those misfits, rebels and the crazy ones. For all those perpetually hitched on the roller coaster ride of entrepreneurial journey, this book is first of a kind to delve into the dark side and present a balanced approach to building your inner core as you build your company. This is no quick-fix guide, and we are perpetual work-in-progress. Today is Day One. Let us start the journey.
Author(s): Mahendra Ramsinghani
Publisher: Wiley
Year: 2021
Language: English
Pages: 320
City: Hoboken
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Discontents
Foreword
Acknowledgments
About the Cover
A Note to Readers
Introduction The Despondent Founder
Psychological Quotient – An Introduction
My Hope for You
Part I Running to a Standstill
Chapter 1 When Suicide Seems Like a Good Option
Breaking the Taboo: Discussing Suicide
Self-image and Ineptitude
Does Our Attitude Define Our Outcomes?
Chapter 2 Stepping Back fromthe Edge
Looking for Clarity
Chapter 3 How External Events Trigger Negative Feelings
Persistence: The Double-Edged Sword
Four Types of Stressors
How Is This Thought Helping Me?
Chapter 4 Obstacles and Frustrations
Barriers to Entry – The Old versus the New
Resources versus Constraints
Process versus Rewards
Part II Understanding Our Psychology
Chapter 5 Building Our Psychological Quotient
Seeking a Crazy Kind of Adventure
When Our Emotions Clash with Logic
The Three Regions of Inner Conflict
Chapter 6 Ethics
Building a Start-Up with a Sense of Meaning
Ethics, Morality, Righteousness, and Superego
Chapter 7 Do the Right Thing
Ethics at Work
Greatest Good for the Greatest Number
Ethics and Social Change – Lessons from Coinbase
Building an Ethical Framework
Chapter 8 Ego – The Emperorand the Slave
Impulses, Ego, and Superego
Why Is Ego Necessary in Business?
The Ego and Our Self-Image
Chapter 9 Working with Your Ego
A Founder’s Ego Is Abnormal
Who Does Your Ego Serve?
The Ego Is Not the Enemy
Chapter 10 The Hidden Land of Desires and Motivations
Meet Your Id
The Desire to Start Something Up
Our Hidden Desires and Drivers
The Danger of Unmet Desires
Chapter 11 Logos and the Mind
The Analytical Engine of the Mind
What Is the Mind?
The Three Broad Functions of Our Mind
Chapter 12 Pathos: Belief Systems
Our Beliefs Drive Our Behaviors
Our Beliefs Dictate Our Narratives
Is Ambition a Vice or Virtue? It Depends on What You Believe
Chapter 13 Putting It All Together
Part III Reassembling the Furniture
Chapter 14 Toward Building a Healthy Ego
What Is a Healthy Ego?
Are You Able to Control Your Impulses?
How Does Your Ego Protect You When You Feel Unsafe?
Can You Master Your Ego?
Chapter 15 Psychotherapy: An Imperfect History of an Impossible Profession
Sigmund Freud: The Past Creates the Future
Carl Jung: A Look at the Dark Side
Alfred Adler: The Past Does Not Matter, Just Focus on the Present
Chapter 16 Fearing Our Own Selves . . . and Other Mental Blocks
How We Resist Our Development – Ignorance and Denial
Dismantling the Blocks
Many Different Ways, One Destination
Uncover the Hidden and the Repressed
The Hard Thing About Therapy – Letting the Therapist Drive
Chapter 17 Stages of Therapy
Four Phases of Therapy
Chapter 18 Challenges and Pitfalls in Therapy
The Road to a Healthy Mind Is Long
Chapter 19 Medicating Our Way to Recovery
The Medication Debate
Motivations, Money, and the Need for Speed
To Medicate or Not to Medicate Is a Longstanding Debate
Part IV These Rituals Worked for Us
Chapter 20 A Soul Made Cheerful
How We Avoid Self-Care
Chapter 21 Prescription 1 – An Organized Diminution of Work
Pause, Balance, Breathe
The Feeling of Not Doing
Chapter 22 Prescription 2 – Get Out of Your Head
Less Head, More Body
Silencing the Inner Chatter
Managing the Velcro of Negative Experiences
Cortisol, Serotonin, and Dopamine – The Magic of Touch
Chapter 23 Prescription 3 – Feeling, Not Thinking
Music and Moods
In Service of Others
Gratitude with Presence
It’s a Matter of Time – Reflections and Rumination
Chapter 24 Prescription 4 – Spirit over Mind
Staring in the Abyss
What Do You Worship?
Pick Your Gods or They Pick You
Seeking Solace
Understanding Our Shadow Side – Fears, Envy, Resentment
Chapter 25 Prescription 5 – A Promise to Yourself
Chapter 26 The Elements ofa Good Life
Postscript: How to Care for the Broken and the Depressed
Appendix I: A Founder’s Mental Health Manifesto
Appendix II: Founders’ Voices and Anonymized Surveys
Notes
About the Author
About the Website
Index
EULA
