Quick question: when you are faced with an unpleasant task, one that could potentially have negative consequences, do you face it head-on or do you avoid it for as long as possible?
If you’re like most, you put it off for as long as you can. Unfortunately, that could be the worst possible thing you could do.
When you put off dealing with a situation that has the potential to be unpleasant, you are really making your life worse. Sure, in the very short run you may feel good, since you are avoiding the unpleasantness, but everyday you delay is another day you have to live with the stress and worry of the situation.
Even worse, your unwillingness to walk through that uncomfortable fire serves as a bottleneck that prevents your life from moving forward until you do.
Sometimes (quite often, really) to make things better you have to make them a whole lot worse first.
Last week I posted about a friend of mine who had a horrible boss. There is an interesting update to that story which inspired this post.
My friend had a meeting with that horrible boss, and she was incredibly nervous about it. She wanted to tell him some things that made her uncomfortable and that hurt her performance at work, but she was afraid that he would flip out and get pissed.
We talked about it and figured that there were three likely outcomes:
- Her boss would listen with an open mind and work with her to make the situation better
- Her boss would talk with her but would ultimately make no change
- Her boss would get mad and defensive and yell at her.
She was convinced #3 was what would happen. I believed there was a chance that #1 or #2 might occur. Call me a cock-eyed optimist (or an idiot – your pick).
Guess what? I was wrong and she was dead right. After she had her meeting with him she sent me a text that said, “It was the worst of all possible outcomes.”
Yes, he got pissed. Yes, he yelled at her. Yes, he made irrational claims and accusations. And yes, he even brought up the fact that he was upset at something that had happened two years earlier. She hadn’t wronged him, mind you, but he had backed her up in something and he was upset that she never “showed him enough appreciation” for that. Whatever the hell that means. Yes, for two years, rather than discussing it with her, he harbored ill will and made her life miserable. I told you, he’s a horrible boss and a dumbass.
In any case, this made the situation far worse than it had been. To this point, she had been on edge around him and felt that she could never make him happy. Now there was out and out animosity and he sent some follow up emails reprimanding her further and demanding that she start submitting a “weekly report” of everything she worked on and for how long for every day.
The situation was worse, and she was incredibly upset. Lots of stress, lots of fear, and a bit of despair.
That sucks, and you may be thinking, “Wow, she should have just kept her mouth shut.”
If your goal is to maintain a terrible status quo, then you would be correct. However, if your goal is to be happy and fulfilled in your career and be treated with the respect you deserve, then you would be wrong.
You see, this ridiculously horrible meeting triggered a series of events that ultimately led to a wonderful outcome:
- She called a career coach (the excellent Ford Myers) who, in one short conversation, made her realize (and maybe just gave her permission to accept) that having a “transition” job or career was a fine option, and that sometimes taking a bit of a pay cut was ok if it let you either do what you want or get you out of a bad situation.
- This same call made her realize that she didn’t want to remain in the field she was in. She may stay in the industry, but she no longer wanted to have the same job. This was not surprising to me because it was a long time coming, but this event was the catalyst to her that made her realize it.
- The two realizations above made her reach out to a company she had worked part-time for one summer. They had wanted to hire her for a new position that they wanted to create just for her. This would have been the ideal job for her, but back then they could not come to an agreement on money. She wanted to make the same amount of money she had been making. Now, however, things were different.
- She set up a phone call with the owner of that company where they talked numbers, and she told him a price she was willing to work for. The owner was so excited to have her on the team, that as soon as their call ended, he talked to their accountant, checked the numbers, and called her back within an hour to offer her a position at that salary!
To put the timeline in perspective, the horrible meeting was on Thursday. The call with the career coach was on Friday. She emailed her old boss Friday evening, and he emailed her back that night to set up a time to talk. They spoke Monday afternoon, and by Monday at 5:30PM she had a job offer.
That’s a time period of just over 4 days.
Wow.
You think any of that would have happened if she had kept her mouth shut in that meeting with her boss and not mentioned what was bothering her?
Probably not. She would have walked out that door just as discontent before, which was not discontent enough to take action.
By walking through that fire (the meeting with her soon-to-be old boss), by taking an action designed to improve a bad situation, even one that had a chance of making things worse, she created incentive and momentum to finally take action.
For her, it paid off huge. Will it always work out that wonderfully? No, of course not. But taking steps to try and improve your situation is almost always a good thing, even if it seems to make the situation worse at first.
If you do force yourself into that unpleasantness, one of two things will happen:
- It may work, and your situation may improve.
- It may not work, at which point you will have more motivation to change.
The real enemy here is complacency. Once you allow yourself to get complacent with a bad situation, you may find yourself staying there for months, or even years longer than you want as you just try to avoid the unpleasantness and slog along.
Life is too short for that. Don’t settle for “just getting by” working at a job that makes you miserable or for a boss you hate.
I’m not advocating that you run out and quit tomorrow. However, think about that conversation you have been putting off, that situation that bothers you, that person at work that you dread interacting with at work. I am advocating that you address those situations soon, even if you are afraid at how they may turn out.
It may not be a very pleasant experience. However, in the long run, it may turn out to be the most pleasant thing you could possibly do.
P.S. Hey, if you like this post, why don’t you share the love and click the Facebook “Like” button at the top of this page…?
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