Have you ever felt sorry for yourself when things haven’t gone your way? Have you avoided difficult conversations only to damage your reputation further by not addressing the issue?
Story
Having run my own businesses for over 25 years I have seen some ups and downs in my time. We have experienced some brilliant successes & enjoyed the highs & abundance success can bring. But we have also experienced the pain of when things go wrong.
Several years ago we nearly lost our business. It was a stressful time, in fact I cannot remember a more stressful time in my life. Imagine putting all of yourself into something over many years and for it all to come crashing down around you.
We get so personally invested in our jobs or our businesses and often forget the impact it can also have on our teams or our families.
Because we were dwelling on the issues, stuck in the mud, we couldn’t see a way out. We found ourselves running away from further issues rather than tackling them head on which started to really impact our reputation. You see the longer we left an issue to deal with, the worse it became because the other people involved became frustrated by our avoidance placing an unnecessary stress on those relationships.
I can honestly tell you I had never felt so low, stressed and demoralised.
Learning Point
Well this story has a happy ending. Because we stayed resilient and eventually realized we needed to communicate the issues immediately. You see the longer we left it, the weaker our position was.
I experienced a needless year of agonising over an outcome which was in fact always inevitable.
We realised with the benefit of hindsight that there is a profound learning that comes from failure, it stays with you far more than the lessons from success. But if you have invested in your network, you will have support through difficult times, as long as you keep the communication channels open.
These lessons enabled us to evolve our thinking and avoid making the same mistakes again. Don’t be afraid to fail, and if you do fail, do it quickly & learn from it.
