The Best Way to Face What You’ve Been Avoiding
“Solve big problems early. Rebound after one missed workout, not a decade of inactivity.
Repair a strained relationship the next day, not years later.
Fix overspending before it becomes a lifestyle.
Problems with simple solutions at first become difficult to unwind over time.”
– James Clear, Atomic Habits
I love this quotation so much that I’ve literally been copying and pasting it onto the to-do list I create each week.
There’s something so important about facing the things we avoid – EARLY.
I can look at my life overall and trace so many of my problems back to waiting or ignoring – waiting until that hard conversation became easier (which it never did), or ignoring those little intuitive nudges that something wasn’t working.
A few years ago, I hired a new event team to run my events. By the second meeting I knew it wasn’t going to work out. They were sloppy, unorganized and unprofessional – clearly my little event wasn’t a priority for them.
When I spoke with my husband about it, he said to me, “Monica, it’s not too late to make another arrangement. You could pay them a fair payment and then move on.”
But I was afraid to be bold, to be mean, to be – dare I say it – a b!tch. So I carried on, and the relationship continued to worsen on both sides. The event itself was my worst event experience to this day. I cried for days afterwards, and I needed a two-week vacation just to get it all out of my system and move forward.
Hindsight is 20/20 and there’s so many ways I could have dealt with that situation better, from holding onto the reins more tightly to advocating more for what I wanted. But the truth is that I hid away from facing those decisions head on and, most importantly, EARLY on.
I wish I could say that was the last time this happened. But it wasn’t.
That same year, I also avoided some other hard conversations. I had two full-time employees who weren’t working out. Instead of having the conversation I needed to have with them and perhaps letting them go, I just worked harder to make up for all that they weren’t doing.
I told myself things like, “They aren’t that bad,” “At least some work is getting done,” “It’s just too hard to hire and train again,” “This isn’t the right time,” and definitely: “There’s no one out there for me.” These were all excuses I made because I didn’t want to face the problem.
Looking back, there wasn’t a huge hit to our revenue that year – but I did suffer from what I call trust scars.
A trust scar is a wound that leaves you struggling to trust people. In the aftermath of those two ruptures, operated from an insulated island, both consciously and subconsciously. I started taking on more of the work myself and keeping people at arm’s distance.
Today, these lessons live within me. I try to handle problems both in my personal life and my professional life as soon as they come up – and address them head-on.
My mantra is, “I can do this. My company will stay strong no matter what happens in front of me.”
Today, I can’t stand that nagging feeling of avoiding a hard conversation or a brewing problem. I can’t even go for a run or walk in peace if I feel like I’m avoiding something or ignoring an inner voice. I guess 18 years of business have really shifted that part of me.
The good news for you is that once you stop avoiding and learn to face things head-on – you too will start to become addicted to that feeling: the feeling of peace when you know that you’ve done the best you can to handle things honestly.
My guess is that you can relate to some aspect of these scenarios, whether you’ve got a virtual assistant who just isn’t grooving with you, a vendor who seems to be ignoring you, a client who is a bully, or any comparable scenario.
What I can tell you from nursing my own pain over here is that it’s not worth it to suffer silently!
You deserve to have people around you that support you fully, in the way that you want to be supported.
You deserve to be able to have hard conversations with people without feeling like you’re going to crush them.
You deserve to be able to make changes without the fear that your whole company will collapse. You created that business and no matter what you do, it will keep going.
But remember that the fastest and easiest way to deal with something is to address it early and honestly.
Have that conversation with your virtual assistant about why she didn’t make the deadline you agreed on. Talk to your website vendor about why she isn’t sending you regular status reports. Ask your client who seems to be unhappy how you both can shift the relationship.
Don’t wait until it becomes easier (because it won’t).
Don’t wait until it’s the right time (because it rarely is).
Don’t try to take on more yourself (because you’ll just burn out).
And most importantly…
Don’t stop trusting people (because loneliness is real and can be very painful).
You can do this. Your company will stay strong.
If you’re looking for some support around facing things head on, I’d love to see you at our 30 Days of Social Media webinar.
This is a (free!) 90-minute masterclass where you’ll actually write social media posts as I’m teaching. You’ll walk out having created social media posts for the next 30 days and feeling excited to get visible in your business.
