3 Types of Guilt Every Entrepreneur Should Leave Behind in 2020

With the start of the new year comes the idea of a clean slate, a momentary bliss of fresh air, and the ability to hit the reset button. But the truth is, for many entrepreneurs, 2021’s momentary bliss finds to be short-lived because of the wave of 2020 guilt. There is a weight that we’ve chosen to carry by starting a business, but the guilt of last year’s fallout seems to be the heaviest this year. 

Even if your business survived the most horrific year known to man, the feelings of guilt and pressure have most certainly carried over into 2021. And if I’m being honest, what does survival even look like? Is it a functioning website with some coin in the bank, is it enough to get through next month's bills, or is it even a complete 180 from where you started in order to do any of the above? The entire world is struggling, so I know I’m not alone in these mixed emotions, but as entrepreneurs, we tend to feel shame in the struggle. We feel that we need to silence the struggle because until our struggle becomes only a chapter of the story, it’s not worthy of the discussion. 

I am here to tell you that it is categorically false.

I wish more entrepreneurs could raise their hand and say, "don't worry girl I feel it too." If we don’t lean into our struggles and dissect them accordingly, we are going to carry the guilt far beyond 2021. If you’re an entrepreneur who feels this way, you’re not alone. I too am carrying the pressures of running a company and the associated guilt that comes from the fall out of 2020. The highs, the lows, the anxiety, the failures, the pivots, even the successful ones are elements of this guilt. 

I talk at length about professional pivots, career cliff jumps, and professional self-awareness as it relates to career advancement for a living. As the new year begins, instead of setting annual goals, I’m taking inventory of my guilt carried on from 2020. I’m taking inventory so I can get to the root of it, reduce (in hopes to eliminate) the shame, and repurpose my guilt for grit and forward progress. Analyzing our guilt, guiding ourselves back to a place of self-acceptance, and thriving instead of surviving in 2021 is actually the goal of this practice. I encourage every entrepreneur to list three areas of guilt they are carrying into 2021 from the previous year. Take that list and tie it back to areas of your personal growth story and reverse engineer a route to alleviate the burden. 

1. Guilt From the Unknown - I personally carry guilt for not being able to anticipate, and even more so, that all of the tools I had used in the past didn’t quite work as I had hoped in 2020. Just reading that sentence back, I know it sounds ludicrous. No human being could have anticipated this, and yet I carry the guilt of that like a ton of bricks.

Plot twist to the mind game we call business: entrepreneurs are not mindreaders and are not superhuman.

I’ve realized in this inventory, that it ties back to my constant need to be perfect. Not even a pandemic could quiet my perfectionism complex. As the leader, we are not allowed to feel, but to fuel. We are not allowed to pause, but to be perfect. These are the narratives that perpetuate guilt when unexpected loss or areas of control are taken from us as entrepreneurs. I’m using these areas of guilt to put in the work around enabling perfection at all cost mindsets and finding my center without control.

2. Guilt From the Expectations - I’m carrying guilt for not meeting expectations, even if those expectations were unrealistic for the year at hand. In this inventory, I realize that this area of my personality relies on external validation. When you’re at the top of the pyramid, there is rarely a pat on the back for your efforts and a majority go unnoticed. There is also this constant feeling as though you should have it all figured out because that’s your job. Recently, I had a hard conversation with myself in the mirror that it is actually not my job to fix everything. Entrepreneurs and organizational leaders are human too. I realized in this area of inventory that my lack of external validation allowed my personal narrative to be a negative one. We have to speak to ourselves as we would a friend or a colleague.

Instead of waiting for external validation, I have to have kinder conversations with myself, ones that don’t rely on perfection, but acceptance. 

3. Guilt From the Missteps - The third and final area of guilt that centers around the mistakes of 2020, because the pressure to perform was at an all-time high. I’ve felt as though the world was screaming “Failure is not an option” in my face for 9 months even in the smallest of tasks.

I have continually put in the work to reconfigure my thought process with failure, with respect to forgiveness, by making peace with mistakes or pivots. Even face plants have to be forgiven. We have to use our reminder from expectations and adapt our internal conversations to ones of forgiveness as well. 

I am thrilled that 2020 is over, but I’m also realistic that I’m still carrying some of its baggage in 2021. If you’re looking for a new way to approach goals in the new year, I encourage you to assess the guilt you're carrying, breakthrough to the why, and transform that guilt to grit for a better year ahead. Regardless of how you and your business’ survival look in 2021, you owe it to yourself to release the shame, guilt and achieve all the glory on your own terms, even if that looks vastly different than you expected.