Self-Compassion When Coping With Venture Obstacles: Loving-Kindness Meditation and Entrepreneurial Fear of Failure

By Yuval Engel, Stephany Noordijk, Afra Spoelder, M. van Gelderen. 2019

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Entrepreneurial fear of failure is a ubiquitous yet aversive experience with critical implications for entrepreneurial action and well-being. To understand how entrepreneurs can effectively cope with fear-inducing obstacles, we hypothesize and experimentally test the extent to which self-compassion, cultivated through Loving-Kindness Meditation (LKM), counteracts entrepreneurs’ fear of failure when facing a threatening venture obstacle. Compared to an active control group, entrepreneurs exposed to a brief guided LKM showed higher self-compassion, which, in turn, was associated with lower fear reactivity. We offer novel contributions to entrepreneurship theory and practice by highlighting the role of meditation and self-compassion in building entrepreneurial resilience.

Subfields: Applied Psychology, Clinical Psychology, Demography

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/122b7cede566c38d6926a377a6989cbc91935d8b