The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur

May 9The Lens of Others

To ascend one step—we are better served through our sympathy. Activity is contagious. Looking where others look, and conversing with the same things, we catch the charm which lured them. Napoleon said, “You must not fight too often with one enemy, or you will teach him all your art of war.” Talk much with any one of vigorous mind, and we acquire very fast the habit of looking at things in the same light, and, on each occurrence, we anticipate their thought.

Ralph Waldo Emerson—Uses of Great Men (1849)

In order to expand, we need role models and examples or, as Emerson would have put it, exemplars.

These sources of inspiration are not here to teach us best practices or give us a template to duplicate, but as a way to see the world through new eyes. We need to study other entrepreneurs, even those we might study with envy, in order to “catch the charm which lured them.”

When you begin to study others in this manner, you are forced to drop the ego you may have attached to your brilliant idea and look to those who have succeeded in some dimension, not for answers but for questions.

The only way someone else can help you is to help you question what you believe.

Emerson further stated in this work: “I cannot tell you what I know: but I have observed there are persons who, in their character and actions, answer questions which I have not skill to put.”

Let those you aspire to copy (although you have no idea why they are more successful than you) be a lens ...