“My marriage fell apart, I went into a deep depression, my kid went into rehab.”

Why do you want to start a business? The answer to this question will depend on who you ask. For some, it could be because they believe they have a great idea, others could be inspired by a mentor or successful parents who happen to own a business. Some would tell you it is because they want to escape the rat race. Either way, nobody goes into business thinking to themselves “Hey….I want to fail”

So what happens is they throw their all into it and if they happen to come out of it successful, they get to enjoy the reward of their hard work. At least that is what it looks like on the surface. But beneath all the glamor lies a dark truth, most times, the cost is more than they bargained for.

For Alli Webb, it was her marriage, her mental health, and her son. Webb was a college dropout and a stay-at-home mom who discovered a niche for herself, blowing out hair. Her reason for starting Drybar was to “get out of the house and earn a little extra cash.” She threw herself into the business and not so surprisingly, her efforts paid off.

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Drybar became a multimillion-dollar company with stores in several locations across the country. Webb later sold the company for more than 200 million dollars. It wasn’t until the millionaire had sold off that she unveiled the true cost of her success. In her memoir, Webb told of how she went through a divorce and struggled with her mental health while dealing with her son who had to be rehabilitated at the same time.

Here’s what she had to say about all that…”it’s just real life.” This is the absolute truth. Life doesn’t stand still for entrepreneurs. You don’t get to take a break from life just because you want to change the world. In essence, there is no time off. There are many self-help books on how to achieve work-life balance, but while this could be effective for someone working a 9 to 5, most of these strategies barely cut it in the spontaneous and uncertain world of entrepreneurship.

So what do you do then? Clearly, you can’t let your business down, nor can you ignore your personal life. Here’s where surrounding yourself with the right people matters the most. This could be a supportive spouse, relatives, or friends who could take some of the load off your back so you can focus on business. That is not to say you won’t occasionally bear the brunt of running a business.

“The best way to describe the situation is a term from Star Trek, Steve Jobs has a reality distortion field.”

Imagine having your own force field and inside it, everything is possible. You do anything you imagine right inside your little force field. Well, this may sound like something out of a science fiction movie but indeed, there was a man who was able to somehow bend realities to suit his purpose.

“[Jobs’] reality distortion is when he has an illogical vision of the future, such as telling me that I could design the Breakout game in just a few days. You realize that it can’t be true, but he somehow makes it true.”

That was Apple’s Co-founder Steve Wozniak describing the inexplicable ability of Steve Jobs to push reality beyond mere facts and ask for the unimaginable from those who worked with him. Of course, you can imagine their reaction, at first they pushed against the idea but soon found themselves succumbing to it, only to get back to their senses after Jobs left the room.

This incredible phenomenon became known as a Reality Distortion Field. As the CEO of Apple, much of Jobs's success is attributed to his ability to control his environment. These include the people he worked with and how they thought. If Jobs believed that a product could be pushed out in days, it didn’t matter if his team thought this was possible or not.

Although Jobs’s reality distortion field made him a resounding success, it also made him one of the most difficult people to work with. However, many years after Jobs passed away, books have been written on the incredible power of the reality distortion field, and how to harness its power. The first place to start is learning to control your thoughts.

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But even if you could learn to control your thoughts, the true power of the reality distortion field is in getting others to think the way you do. This is much more difficult than Jobs made it seem and part of the reason he was so successful is because of his Charisma.

Charismatic leaders often have a cult-like following. They could somehow get people to believe in something that would be absolutely ridiculous coming from anyone else but them. Jobs was easily one of the most charismatic leaders in the tech world and today, that position is occupied by another equally charismatic CEO - Elon Musk.

By now you may begin to see a trend that could make most people feel uneasy. Perhaps this force of will only works for people who fall within the “Genius” category. But that is not the case. There are many successful CEOs who are not nearly as smart as Jobs or Elon Musk. Therefore you don’t necessarily have to be a genius to accomplish this.

That brings us to the third quality of those who have truly mastered the art of bending their reality, Self Believe. A long time ago, Henry Ford founder of the Ford Motor Company said, “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t. You are right.” Ford may have said this years ago but it still holds true even today.

You can’t go beyond the confines of your imagination just like you can’t achieve something when you strongly believe you don’t have what it takes. It doesn’t matter how much effort you put in, you will likely come up short every time. It is that simple. So are you ready to alter your own reality and start doing the impossible? Then you need to control your thoughts, develop charisma, and believe in yourself.

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“Do or Do not…..There is no Try”