Entrepreneurship Is a Metamorphosis

Choosing entrepreneurship is not just choosing a business model.

It is choosing a developmental path that almost guarantees psychological change.

This is why so many capable people feel destabilised when they step into entrepreneurship.

The external challenge is obvious, money, responsibility, uncertainty.

The internal challenge is less visible, but far more demanding, because entrepreneurship forces a person to move through stages of development they may never have needed to confront before.

Friedrich Nietzsche described this progression long before modern business existed, through what he called the three metamorphoses of the spirit: the camel, the lion, and the child.

While written as philosophy, it maps almost perfectly onto the inner journey entrepreneurs are pushed through when they choose a path outside conventional structures.

Stage 1: The Camel, Carrying the Load

The first stage is the camel.

The camel represents endurance and compliance, the ability to carry weight without questioning its origin.

Most people arrive in adulthood already well trained as camels.

They have absorbed expectations from family, education, culture, and authority, and learned that virtue lies in coping, behaving, and meeting predefined standards.

This is where Someone Else’s Rules are installed.

Widely accepted beliefs that feel like reality simply because they are shared.

You must avoid mistakes at all costs.

Trying and failing is bad.

Formal qualifications determine your future.

Your past predicts your future.

Life is safest when you avoid risk.

The beaten path exists for a reason.

If enough people believe something, it must be true.

Good things come to those who wait.

It takes money to make money.

You need permission.

Do not ask obvious questions.

Great achievement is reserved for the naturally gifted.

Many careers allow people to live their entire lives inside these rules, rewarded for endurance and compliance.

Entrepreneurship does not.

Stage 2: The Lion, Learning the No

The moment someone chooses entrepreneurship, they unknowingly sign up for the second stage.

This transition is not optional.

Pressure forces it.

Reality stops conforming to the rules you were given.

Effort does not guarantee reward.

Waiting creates stagnation.

Permission never arrives.

Mistakes become unavoidable.

The old assurances break under real responsibility.

This is where the lion emerges.

The lion represents the capacity to say no.

Not no as rebellion for its own sake, but no as discernment.

No to inherited rules that no longer work.

No to paths chosen by consensus rather than intention.

No to living inside a framework that was never designed for ownership, risk, or creation.

This stage is uncomfortable and often lonely.

It can look like frustration, disillusionment, or questioning everything you once believed about success and safety.

Many entrepreneurs stall here.

They reject the old rules, but never move beyond resistance.

Stage 3: The Child, the Sacred Yes

This is why Nietzsche’s third stage matters so much.

Because rejection alone does not create meaning.

The child represents the sacred yes.

Not innocence, but creative authority.

The ability to build new values, new rules, and new definitions of success after the old ones have been stripped away.

This is where entrepreneurship becomes internally sustainable.

At this stage, the entrepreneur is no longer reacting to Someone Else’s Rules, nor defining themselves against them.

They are authoring their own rule book.

They choose which risks are worth taking.

They define what success means.

They decide how work, money, time, and purpose fit together in a way that feels coherent to them.

Social Construction, Meaning, and Living Without Absolutes

This is not about right or wrong, or whose truth is superior.

It is about recognising that most of what we call reality is socially constructed, and that fulfilment requires conscious participation in that construction.

When you understand that each person lives by a different internal rule set, judgement softens and responsibility increases at the same time.

The Real Choice Behind the Choice

Entrepreneurship demands this progression.

From carrying rules, to rejecting rules, to creating rules that align with who you are becoming.

Choosing entrepreneurship means choosing development.

Choosing it fully means committing to all three stages.