I can handle being judged for my own actions, being judged by your insecurities is beyond my patience level. I have no track record of behavior that would ever say I am not approachable or hard to talk to. I am actually known for being a pretty reasonable person. But, I still get people avoiding hard conversations because they have a hard time with it, not me. They don’t want to have the conversation, so they fabricate the idea that I am hard to speak with, when it is really them that is uncomfortable with what they have to say.
This is a pretty common thing. People project their shortcomings and issues onto others because they don’t want to own their own stuff. They need you to be the problem so the can hide from their personal truth. This is really dysfunctional and simply not good behavior for anyone. This happens at all level of professional and private life.
Please do your best to not be one of these people. For a long time I was this guy. Anyone who left my gym was branded as flawed and weak. It wasn’t that their personal needs were not being met, it was that they couldn’t tow the line! I was really wrong to think this way, to brand people as I did, and to hide from the truth for so long. Eventually I woke up and started to act accordingly.
Being on both sides, I can tell you the honest side is so much better. I challenge myself when I lose business and force myself to be better, not more dictatorial. The more people leave, the more freedom I offer. I want honest choices being made by my customers. I do not want people afraid to leave my business or new customers afraid to start. I have to do my job so well that they know they can leave at any time but they don’t feel the need to.
The most iron fisted are the most insecure. I know people really good at what they do but are so insecure that they can’t allow themselves to embrace it. I also know people that are really horrendous at what they do and use the iron fist to shelter people from the truth. Both cases are personally weak people that use an iron fist to maintain what they know they shouldn’t be doing or don’t believe in their ability to. I was trained by weak people to think that the iron fist was the way. They were weak, I was wrong. Now I do what I do with confidence grounded in reality.
Besides the iron fist, we have the conspiracy people. It isn’t them, it is the industry, the world, the illuminati… Sorry, but it is you and it has always been you, it will always be you. You can hang onto old habits or you can serve the marketplace what it needs and wants. If the market is rejecting you, it’s because you are just not good at business. You may be good at your craft but you can’t figure out how to provide an answer to a market’s problem or to provide value that the market has shown a need for. It isn’t the world working against you, it is you not giving the world what it is accepting at this moment.
Whatever the issue may be, everything is on you. Stop dreaming up excuses and go do the hard things, the easy things, the things you do and do not want to do because this is the price of entry into success.
Brian Wright
www.brianwright732.com