You've Got to Eat the Mushroom

From time to time one hears of or meets people who are obsessed with some idea that from the outside simply looks crazy ("butter") and has nothing to do with a carefully planned and then executed business plan or project. Collecting matchboxes and selling them online, founding an association for research into anomalous phenomena, creating a typing speed measurement tool, making an art installation from burnt-out light bulbs, and so on. Moreover, these people are not troubled by questions of resource planning, implementation timescales, payback periods, publicity or customer acquisition. They succeed simply by pursuing an activity they enjoy.

Sometimes, seeing something created in this way, one wants to exclaim - what mushrooms has he been eating?! But hey, it speaks to someone, otherwise its creator would long since have died of hunger. One must conclude that such people possess a very important component - belief. And it is not the persuasion of oneself and others with numbers, logical argumentation or a "story", which is necessary for any more or less successful business project. One simply believes, and everything happens.

To draw up a successful plan and calculate finances, one can go to a business or financial consultant. To overcome one's inner barriers, fears or reduce uncertainty - which are mainly the consequences of upbringing and childhood experiences - one can go to a psychotherapist. To find belief in the immaterial, in a higher power, and develop trust in God's will, one can speak with a pastor. To develop leadership, oratorical skill and communication abilities, one can hire a coach. But how does one acquire belief that the idea one has latched onto will be successfully realised?

If one thinks about it, all the aforementioned advisers, teachers, gurus help to create the illusion that you can definitely do it if… (condition). A list follows of skills to be acquired, people and things to be renounced, behavioural patterns to be changed, and so on. The result: a futile expenditure of time, money and willpower, because you simply don't have the naive belief that all of it will work.

Well then, does one have to eat the mushroom? To not accept others' created illusions, but live in one's own. That is - without changing oneself (changing oneself in accordance with society's standards and values being the fundamental principle of education, upbringing and religion), to change reality around oneself. The question remains open...