The Resilient Founder

26The Elements ofa Good Life

When it is all done, how do we know it was a life well lived, that the pain was all worth it?

What should we look back on? As we know, entrepreneurs have accepted Joseph Schumpeter as their God, and have a raging desire to disrupt the status quo. Propelled to deliver magical gifts to society, the founder's journey is beset with dreams of largesse. Electricity, rocket ships, autonomous vehicles, flying cars, a GPT-3 based intelligent world where our brains are transcranially linked to search engines. Nothing is impossible.

To pull such magical feats, it is necessary for founders to have cognitive dissonance, a ravenously high appetite for risk, a false perception of their own invincibility, superpowers and magical sleights of hand, not fazed by the stigma of failure. What is failure anyway? After all, that's just a point of view. Such mantras allow founders to be special in their own way. But for some, this causes a unique form of madness; their mercurial minds can turn against themselves. What silent force gives tenacity and fortitude to some, and fatigues others – we will never fully understand nor know?

A life well lived is exemplified by a series of longitudinal studies conducted by Harvard Medical School researchers. Over 800 people agreed to share facets of their lives and stayed engaged in the study from their teens to old age. The goal – to identify traits and characteristics that led to a fulfilling life. In Aging Well: Surprising Guideposts ...