It’s that time of year. You are setting goals, making resolutions, and hoping that some of them will actually happen this time around.

January is always filled with optimism. I know in my heart that this year is going to be different – and better – than the last. I am ready and invested in doing something big but by early February life will probably take over and distract me with opportunities and problems again.

Not this time! I will not let it happen.

I think I finally understand. To get what I truly want from my business I have to step back a bit. It really isn’t all about me. It is more about focusing my time, energy, and attention on where my strengths play to their best outcome and give room to others to apply their strengths to work with me. I need to pull my fingers back a bit and not be involved in everything.

Ah, the holiday season. It's a time of warm spirits, family and friends and kicking back by a crackling fire. Or, if you’re an entrepreneur, it's a great time to fit in all those tasks and jobs you've had on the back burner and finally get some work done.

Your company has a footing, it has customers and revenue. You're happy – almost. You feel a sense of vision because you didn't lose track of why you began this endeavor in the first place. Or something inside of you is saying things are not what you had thought they would be when you got here.

Are you getting what you want from your business?

Building a great business, one that matters to you as the founder and makes a positive difference for customers, is not a transaction. It is an investment. And I don’t think we are investing the right way in terms of our time, energy, and resources to create companies that are meaningful and last. But we can – we just need to disrupt the way we approach being an entrepreneur.

I know – I’ve been there. Like 30 percent of other entrepreneurs I put off dealing with the stress of my business and what it was doing to me. But I waited too long and was hit by depression. Like 32.5 percent of other entrepreneurs.
 
If you don't think you're the type of entrepreneur who will develop the same stresses as other entrepreneurs and that these stresses won't come crashing down on you if left untreated — you are hurting yourself.

Does looking at this animation make you feel happy? What if I told you it depicts a myosin protein dragging a sack of endorphins to the inner part of the brain, to the parietal cortex, that its role in the brain is to literally transport happiness, that you are directly witnessing physical happiness?

The insatiable drive to find happiness can supersede conventional incentives in driving innovation. Many of the altruistic reasons for society's advancements in the natural and social sciences, literature, technology and even entrepreneurship, to name just a few, can be attributed to the pursuit of happiness.

"There's a lot of air in that soufflé," I heard someone say recently. 

I can't quite remember in what context — maybe it was from a cooking show — in any case, I thought the analogy fit well in summing up the problem with projections these days — too much air, not enough egg … em, data. 

Over-inflated projections based on assumptions rather than data leads to ill informed decisions.