Pamela Slim is a coach and author of Escape from Cubicle Nation.

In her Guest post The Excuses People Use To Stay at a Job she talks about some of the inner, emotional aspects of following our entrepreneurial urges:

“Trying to wait until you have enough courage to start your business is fighting the way your brain is wired. One of the deepest layers of the human brain is a neural structure that evolved in early vertebrates.

“It is wrapped around the cortex of your brain and blasts signals on a regular basis intended to keep you fed and out of danger.

“This ‘lizard brain’ will scream at you all day when you are considering doing something new like starting a business :

* “You don’t have enough experience for anyone to take you seriously as a consultant!”

* “If you leave your stable job to go out on your own, you will live in a van down by the river!”

* “You have no idea what you are doing and when you show your ideas in public for the first time, people will mock and criticize you!”

“Instead of trying to suppress these lizard fears, learn from them.”

Excerpted from post Top excuses and tactics: Why haven’t you started your own business? on the blog of Ramit Sethi – also the title of his book I Will Teach You To Be Rich.

Pamela Slim (Twitter @pamslim) is author of Escape from Cubicle Nation: From Corporate Prisoner to Thriving Entrepreneur, Foreword by Guy Kawasaki.

changing career, finding new vocation, products for entrepreneurs, career development products, small business products, characteristics of entrepreneurs, psychology of entrepreneurs

05.12.09 |
Related Articles

• Bringing more to your cubicle life – or moving beyond it
• Jonathan Fields on being a career renegade in a time of crisis
• Self-limiting beliefs: Do you love your work?
• The SuccessNet Summit
• Using painful times for creative ventures