A Look at How Adversity Shapes Our Best Entrepreneurs

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An oft-cited phrase goes like this: Facing adversities in life can break or make a person. 

Well, adversity is the undeniable reality of life, and one cannot escape it. This holds especially true for entrepreneurs and businesspersons – even the best. But where they have excelled is at finding solutions to beat the challenges that come in the way and resurge. 

The most successful entrepreneurs today are those who have endured adversities of all kinds, never given up, and have been shaped by them – be it from rags to riches or leading their business through unprecedent lows with grit, determination, and innovation. For anyone aspiring to join the ranks of top businessmen in India, learning how to respond to adversity – especially through inspiration from the journeys of our best entrepreneurs – is a must. 

Let us dive into how adversity shapes our best entrepreneurs with relevant examples without further ado. 

1. Finding your resilience  

Adversities will likely journey in everyone’s life in some way or another. These adversities are best dealt with by resilience. Resilience is about standing your ground and then bouncing back in challenging situations. It also helps us in doing things well in multiple facets of life. However, a group of individuals who need to be way more resilient is entrepreneurs. This is because their journey is laden with challenges of a dynamic nature. Look into the stories of successful entrepreneurs; there will be a common ingredient – resilience. 

Famous entrepreneurs in India like Sanjiv Bajaj – the Chairman and Managing Director of Bajaj Finserv – had to demonstrate resilience to emerge unscathed from the recent pandemic-induced crisis. At a time when health and financial uncertainty engulfed the country, Bajaj Finserv lost nearly 350,000 customers within just 10 days of the first lockdown. Net profit and business volumes also fell after the first and second waves. However, Sanjiv Bajaj stayed firm on building resilience within the company. Under his leadership, Bajaj Finance ramped up digitization and risk management practices to sustain the effects of the lockdown. Bajaj also built resilience by being ‘extra capacious’, which involved building capital, equity, and prudence. All these initiatives allowed the company to mitigate the adversities and remain on track for future growth.

2. Cognitive Reappraisal

In business, things may go downhill in a matter of minutes. These times directly affect mental health and may even lead one to lose faith in their abilities and skillsets. Let’s face it, not all entrepreneurial stories end well, especially for those who are easily affect by negative emotions. This is where cognitive reappraisal becomes an important tool for the best entrepreneurs to deal with adversity. 

Cognitive reappraisal means reframing any event to reduce its negative connotation. Simply put, it is an alternate, logical way of looking at your setbacks as a ‘glass half full’ rather than with a sense of defeat or emptiness. Logical over emotional thinking is imperative for entrepreneurs.  

A good example is the story of the IT doyen of India, NR Narayana Murthy – one of the most famous Indian businessmen. Before he set up Infosys, he founded a startup called Softronics in the 1970s. The startup used to offer software services for the Indian market – but was force to shut down within a year. Instead of being dishearten by the situation, NR Narayana Murthy applied cognitive reappraisal by spinning the adversity into believing that the Indian market was not ready for software entrepreneurs yet. After that, he went to work at Patni Computer Systems, where he honed his craft and met like-minded individuals – an experience that led to the establishment of Infosys.

3. Using unique coping mechanisms 

First things first, it is an undeniable fact that coping mechanisms differ from individual to individual. With the amount and complexity of work and challenges, entrepreneurs must learn how to handle work-related stress if they overcome adversity. 

While it is easy to ignore the problem and shy away from facing it, resilient people do not solve problems with this approach. Instead, they focus on building individual coping mechanisms that shift their focus away from stress so that they can make the task less challenging. For example, Anand Mahindra, the Chairman of Mahindra Group, believes in the coping mechanism of morning meditation. On the other hand, Vijay Shekhar Sharma – the Founder of PayTM – uses music as a coping mechanism to deal with challenges and the stress they bring. With the help of such unique coping mechanisms, leaders can use positive distractions to temper their emotions and rely on creative ways to solve challenges.

Final Thoughts 

The underdog theory says that individuals who deal with more adversity in their lives make for dynamic and offbeat entrepreneurs. Comparing this theory to factual information out there, this is true for so many famous Indian businessmen, the trajectory of whose businesses have literally been shape by adversities of all kinds. 

Undeniably, their resilience and hard work helped keep them afloat even in harsh tides, and they managed to reach the other side. The thorough application of the principles mentioned above to deal with adversities by many Indian entrepreneurs enabled them to set benchmarks for how to manage challenges. Their experiences and journeys have paved the way for better inspiration for posterity and a broader and more fertile ground for even more entrepreneurs to rise to the fore.