How to recognize real love and great ideas

As a young boy I once stole (borrowed) a book from my sisters room about love and sex for teenage girls. She must have been 11 and I was 8. I knew way too much about what it meant to be a teenage girl by the time I was 9.

One chapter was about love and how to know if you were really in love. The author described a simple trick to find out if you were really in love: if you were cuddling with your lover and thought ‘Oh look at these cute little pimples on his or her back” you were probably in love. When you thought “Ugh, disgusting, he or she has pimples, how gross!” you probably weren’t in love.

I made a huge impression on me as a kid and I always remembered it and often used it to explain other kids how they could know if it was really love they were experiencing.

The same trick can be used by entrepreneurs too. We have other issues to deal with besides love though. How about whether your ideas are good and the work you are doing is useful?

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When you get up in the morning do you think about the work you will be doing that day and feel joy or do you dread what you have to do? We all know that sometimes there is stuff you don’t want to do or don’t look forward to. Those are the exceptions. Lets look at this quote about how to deal with this:

For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something…almost everything — Steve jobs

I think it is very important to trust your feelings in business, and love.

I knew one entrepreneur who took it even further. He didn’t keep an agenda. He trusted his mind to remember the stuff that was really important. If he forgot about something he figured it couldn’t have been important enough to remember. I don’t suggest you do the same as that manager, or do so at your own risk.

The older I get the more I realize that most decisions in life are taken based on gut feeling and have been justified with logic afterwards. This goes for successful and disastrous decisions all the same. We hardly ever say “It just felt right” but try to come up with reasons why it had to work or a grand strategy that explains it all.

Trust your feelings when it comes to doing business as much as your mind. Trust your instinct and make sure you are in love with your work.