Proclivity for greatness is your birthright.

Don’t believe me?  Just spend a day hanging out with your niece or little cousins.

Pay attention to the way they interact with one other and the outside world.  Whether they’re speaking uncomfortable truths or tugging at your shirtsleeve asking you “why,” their universes are entirely devoid of filters.

Children are born with a fine-tuned entrepreneurial mindset.  They’re naturally curious, self-confident, and eager to solve the world’s problems.  Limitations – especially arbitrary ones foisted on them by authority figures – are their worse than the monster hiding under the bed.

Kids are also prone to action.  If a kid wants to build a tower of blocks, he doesn’t wonder if his idea has already been tried before or what his snot-nosed brother would think.  He just . . . picks up the blocks and starts stacking.

Find me a kid who suffers from “analysis paralysis” and I’ll show a victim suffering the pharmaceutical consequences of an incorrect ADHD diagnosis.

Don’t let her cuteness fool you… She’s a shark in the boardroom!

You were a kid once, but the world tries to make you forget it. 

Most try to rekindle their sense of childlike wonder the same way society tells them to feel any positive emotion: by acquiring a pile of useless material things.

But this just adds another filter between them and their authentic, childhood selves (on top of adolescence, the education system, and disapproving family and friends).  It warps their vision even further.

The technical skills you need to succeed as an entrepreneur are learnable.  But devouring business books without the right entrepreneurial mindset gets the process backwards.

It’s a lot like trying to pick out custom rims for Fred Flintstone’s ride.

You need to worry about the engine.  But how do you look under the hood?

First, step away from the business books.

Then, for each limiting belief that presents itself during your day, spend a moment analyzing it.  What is its source?  Do you have honest empirical evidence (watch out for selection bias!) that supports that belief, or is it just the progeny of something “society” told you about yourself?

Follow up with this one simple question:

Would my childhood self reject this?

If so, then you’re under the influence my friend.  That limiting belief you hear, that isn’t your voice.  Sober up, stop asking for permission, and get out there and test some limits.