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Lessons from ….The Martian

The Foolish Couple 0

Lessons from the movie ‘The Martian’ – from the Entrepreneur’s perspective 

themartian.pgOver the weekend I managed to find time to watch a blockbuster movie, done by one of my all-time favorite actors: Matt Damon. I gotta say, it is much better than all the other ‘outer galaxy’ sci-fi movies that I’ve ever watched. Not only is the movie engaging, exciting, and entertaining, it also ends with a lesson that we can all learn from. But before I tell you what I learned from the movie, here’s my synopsis of ‘The Martian’, featuring Matt Damon: The spacecraft ‘Hermes’ carried 6 astronauts towards a Mission to Mars. And they made it to Mars, only to meet a ferocious storm that forced the crew to leave their mission early and head home. During the storm, astronaut Mark Watney, played by Matt Damon, was presumed dead and was left behind on Mars, all alone by himself. Armed with about a month’s supply of space food and oxygen, Watney, the botanist, decided to ‘Science the sh*t out of it’ and managed to setup his own enclosed environment, grew potato crops, made O2 and H2O, and ultimately survived for hundreds of days until he was saved by his own crew. All alone on a planet by himself, I can’t imagine what would have gone through his mind.

And here’s where the lesson come: At the end of the movie, when he was teaching a roomful of to-be astronauts, here’s what he says: “The most asked question to me was: Have I ever thought that I would die? And the answer is ‘Yes’. You have to accept it, and then you move on. You take your tasks one at a time, and never look back.”

The same applies to Entrepreneurship. When you start a new venture, a new business, every single entrepreneur would, from time to time, have doubts, whether the business would be successful, whether they would get the support they need. But all of us ‘seasoned’ entrepreneurs know that, we have to accept that, despite our best efforts and our best intentions, our business could fail. And we have to accept that. We have to be OK with the fact that, even if we have done our absolute best, even with the best conditions, our business could still fail. And we have to accept it, and decide to still do it.
Every new business is a new adventure. It may succeed. It may fail. We have to know that, and be ok with it. Never let this doubt hold you back. Lay out our tasks, and attack them one step at a time. That’s how we succeed. Never let our inner fear, doubt, and rejections get in the way, Just take our tasks one at a time and move towards success. I hope you enjoy the movie.   —The Foolish Couple

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