My family came to this country for the next generation. It is one of the greatest sacrifices that someone can do – leave their homeland, everything they are familiar with, so that their child and grandchildren can have a better life.
There is so much to the way that my mother raised my brother and me that has penetrated my way of living and being.
How I interpret her sacrifices around work have colored how I see work for myself. And it is her sacrifice that makes me feel guilty for wanting more.
Since graduating college, I have wanted to pursue my own business. It has manifested in many different ways.
There is a pattern in our culture to want to make a living doing what we love to do. Some may call it entitled. Some may call it naïve. And some may call it the natural of things. To me, it feels like the new American dream, an evolution of the one that my mom had.
However, mixing pleasure and work feels like mixing oil and vinegar. When something we love turns into work and reflection of worth, our relationship with that task/skill/hobby gets complicated. The hurdles of succeeding as an entrepreneur are already high. After we throw in our passions, it feels very much like we are running two races that require us to go in opposite directions.
The separation of joy and money runs deep in our culture and within ourselves. Those two measurements of success are quite in opposition which is why I think that becoming an aligned entrepreneur requires the most ultimate self-work. It takes self-development to the umpteenth degree.
To achieve this new American dream, we have to align both parts of the business together and be unafraid to find where there may be gaps in our marketing/strategy/branding or in ourselves that are holding us back.
