PP 167: It’s Time To Squash Our Stubbornness

I am one of the most stubborn people you will ever meet. I will try for days if not weeks, or even months to get something to work, even when the outlook is not looking good at all.

A minor example of this would be that I will sit at my desk and deal with a mouse that is not working properly, or with a keyboard that keeps putting two or three of the same letter in when I only push the key once. I will put up with that for much longer than I should just because, sometimes stupidly, I think oh, it will fix itself. This will be just fine.

Listeners, don’t do this. In the case of the mice and the keyboard, the batteries are dead. They just need to be switched out. But my own stubbornness gets in the way of being successful.

I waste so much time sometimes just because I won’t take a step back and look at the bigger picture to see what is actually going on. In an example not at all related to my work, my husband and I will scour our house looking for socks for littles in the morning when we know that somewhere in the dryer hose, there is a sock monster that has been eating these damn things.

We will spend a half hour looking for socks, they don’t have to be matching. And then finally, a month or two later, it will occur to us and we’re at the store, why don’t we just buy a new pack?

Overcoming stubbornness

I’m not trying to say that every stubborn issue can be solved with an expenditure of money. But when we’re looking to grow our business and grow our personal life, there are oftentimes that we need to take a step back and take a look at the solution that we are trying to shove into place.

Are we trying to shove a square peg into a circle hole?

We’re all gonna have times when we have a team member or client that really doesn’t fit into the bigger picture. But rather than trying to keep pushing forward for fear of loss time or lost money, sometimes it is better to cut our losses and move on.

Our stubbornness and the want to make things work when they obviously are not, can cost us so much more money than if we just let go of what wasn’t working, and then move on to a better solution. This can apply to the tools we’re using, our team members, our clients, and even the idea of our business.

Over a decade ago, I had an online craft store and it was not working. At the end of five years, I was only making a quarter a day. But I did not want to throw in the towel. I had put so much blood, sweat and tears into the business that I didn’t want to see it come to an end.

I was convinced that I could grow it into the next Michaels or Joanne’s fabrics.

However, at the end of those five years, when I suddenly became a single mother and I needed to pay for my own rent and food and utilities, I realized this was not working. I closed the doors, shut down the website and moved on with my life. And let me tell you, that was one of the best decisions I ever made.

(Hear more about my background HERE!)

I’m not telling you to shut down the doors of your business if it’s not working. But I am asking you please to just take a step back and look at the bigger picture. Is the solution that you’re trying to implement really viable? Or are you in fact  trying to put a square peg into a round hole?

Don’t let your stubbornness get the best of you.

Now with this said, go forth and have a positive and productive day.