“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
Your brain has a funny feature.
The moment you commit to something — a business idea, a diet, a relationship — it starts curating your reality to match that commitment. It filters what you see, what you don’t see. Highlights what confirms the story. Buries anything that contradicts it.
In behavioral science it’s called confirmation bias.
This is why we keep working on the business that keeps not working for us. Why we keep trying to make the diet stick even though we fall off the wagon more than we stay on. Why we stay in the job, or the relationship, that hasn’t felt right in months, maybe years, telling ourselves it’s just a phase. That everyone feels this way. That it’ll get better.
2 weeks ago, I shut down the B2B side of my coaching business.
I gave it 2 years of my life.
A lot of energy, time, effort. And it worked — a bit. Just enough to tease me with signs of hope. Just enough to keep me from seeing clearly what’s not working. But objectively? It never got anywhere I could call progress. Maybe it would have. In another decade. But I wouldn’t have survived that decade to find out.
So I wrapped it up. Put it in the metaphorical attic. And went all in on the 1:1 coaching that had been keeping my lights on the whole time.
Some people would call that failure.
I call it an experiment that didn’t work the way I hoped.
Here’s what years of trying things — succeeding at some, not at others — has taught me:
a) Even when you get the result you wanted, it’s often not what you imagined. I lived on a tropical island (a dream of mine). It was boring as hell. I left. The dream had been better than the reality.
b) And goals are just assumptions dressed up as destinations. Just because you have one doesn’t mean it’s possible — at least not for you, not right now. The plan is a first draft, not a guarantee contract.
Not every experiment is meant to work out. Not every goal is meant to be reached. And it’s okay to change course midway when the winds stop blowing your way⛵
Don’t believe everything you think. Don’t assume every vision is meant to become real. Pivot when the evidence asks you to.
What goal in your life, if you checked it against reality right now — honestly, not hopefully — might be ripe for a quit?
PS: One of the sharpest questions in decision-making to help you make this call: “If a complete stranger walked into my life right now, would they stick? Or would they quit?”