Sometimes hope and desperation get us into trouble
I tell the story in my book ‘Gotta Kidney?!’ of my time with the quack homeopathy doctor. I was in the final stages of Stage 4 CKD (chronic kidney disease). My kidneys were rapidly closing down yet I continued to see the doctor and spend exorbitant amounts of money on strange ‘natural’ medications that included such ingredients as cow placenta. These pills may have worked for others but they sure didn’t for me. And all the time, from the beginning, my partner Karin was telling me not to see him. I steadfastly refused her advice even though she has a track record of her intuition being right 99 times out of a 100. I finally stopped seeing the doctor and soon after my kidneys failed.
Sometimes, in our desperation, we will seek help without thinking through the consequences or validity of that help source. I was willing to try almost anything to avoid kidney failure. So I tried what turned out to be a quack doctor.
The same clutching of a straw can occur when one gets carried away by ‘the opportunity’ that seems so exciting at the time.
I wasn’t in a desperate situation when I was referred to a man who would become my business partner for a couple of years. Hope was in the air big time when we first met and decided to go into business together. The main reason we made this decision was because we liked each other and really got along. His Myers Briggs profile was the same as mine except he was an introvert (INFP) and I was an extrovert (ENFP). After two years we had to dissolve the partnership as we realized that we were COMPLETELY unsuited to be in business together. If we had done our homework in the beginning we would have understood that I would have ended up out in the world making all the money and he would have sat behind his computer screen every day doing research. True to type. That’s exactly what happened. I ended up being angry at him for not contributing financially to the partnership while he was happy to stay at home and tweak proposals. We could have avoided two frustrating years.
Sometimes just liking each other is not a sufficient formula for a successful business partnership (or any kind of marriage for that matter).
Whether you’re prompted by desperation or by optimistic hope, I suggest it’s critical to pause for reflection and counsel before launching into what appears to be a promising venture. So be vigilant! Check yourself. Force yourself to seek objective third party advice. And exercise a degree of self discipline in taking your time to discover the source of your impulses and whether or not they are valid in the circumstances. And if they will distort your judgement to your detriment.
