Expanding on realizations expressed in my previous post, motivated by the fact that I still had some doubts about them, I ultimately came to the following conclusion.

All that I really am and all that I love to be is a business aware social entrepreneur. Business aware because I do not abhor the idea of profits and I believe that they can give me more power to do even more in my social enterprises. And social entrepreneur I am because at the same time as I may be driven by the profit potential I am equally or more driven by the prospect of making a positive change by promoting what I believe to be positive ideals.

To be more specific about what kind of a social entrepreneur I am, I would point to the few really key words: humanism, freedom, evolution, technology and business.

I’ve put these terms in an approximate order of importance. By all means the most important thing is to be as human as possible, knowing yourself and living to your full potential. Then you have to have full freedom to be who you are and respect the same freedom for others. Then we also have to be able to grow and evolve, always explore, always be open minded to change. Technology is one of the ultimate material outcomes of all of the previously mentioned, but it bears special mention that when technology comes after appreciation for humanism and freedom it is less likely to be used for human oppression (anti-freedom uses), which is absolutely crucial to me. And in the end, business, the act of empowering yourself by empowering others.

And these keywords also exactly illustrate my main general interests. It could almost be said that the order in which I’ve put them and the explanation that followed is both an expression of what I believe in and what I AM or ultimately want to BE. I realize there could be many other people who would agree with the above order of things, and even many people who are passionate about exactly the same things, but that’s fine. Just because there is one person who is passionate about, say, programming, doesn’t mean there aren’t thousands more. It is good to be in good company. :)

What led me to these conclusions is the fact that my specific interests tend to vary, which makes it rather difficult for me to pick any one of them and call it that one single thing I love to do most and would be most passionate about. Depending on the day I love both Free Software and electronic music roughly equally. How the heck do I pick any of these two as one single thing I love?

Obviously, I need to find something that is, within me, common to both - and I feel “starting new projects”, which is essentially entrepreneurship to be that. It allows me to pursue various interests which I may be passionate about, yet the most passion I will and usually do get is not perhaps so much from that particular interest as much as from the fact that I am starting something new or even changing something existing into something even better.

When I look back to the history of Libervis.com, my longest standing project so far, I see how often I’ve had the urge to revise it to make it into something new, and I enjoyed that, because the prospect of what could come out of such a change was exciting. It is like always standing on the edge of a new frontier, seeing the beautiful colorfull fog in the distance and wondering what it could be hiding.

All this said, I’ve been reading about purpose and I’ve been reading about goal setting and power of belief. While I am yet to give this further thought, I think my purpose is very well already weaved into my being as a social entrepreneur - to help bring on the world I imagine, the world I’ve seen in Star Trek - human beings living their full lives in freedom, exploring the universe and solving their problems with the power of technology.

The goals I set will be mid-term milestones. By the power of belief, and by setting them as believable, I will be able to achieve them. And another important thing I learned, when I set a particular goal, all my focus should be on it, until I either achieve it or truly realize that it was a wrong goal. But failure will not get a break - every failure carries within it a seed of success, as Napoleon Hill in “Think and Grow Rich” nicely said. There is a reason you failed - by the mere fact you know it now and can therefore learn from it, you are more equipped to succeed next time.

Cheers