In the past week I’ve left a client, and I left a date before it started.
I left the client because they were hiding something for a month, and I left the date because they were 15 minutes late and the reason was “they were Brazilian”.
I didn’t leave either of these situations because I was angry. I felt like I was watching TV commercials I didn’t like. I left these situations because I didn’t want to be there anymore, it wasn’t a match, and I realized we had a fundamental difference in values.
The same way I don’t like to keep cake in the house, I don’t want to keep dishonest people in my circle. If you’ve ever read Robert Greene’s work, you’ll have heard him say “people have patterns”. Life got better for me when I started recognizing patterns earlier.
I think about it like this. When I started going to the gym, I started with low weights. Overtime I developed tolerance and strength, so I moved the weights up. The same principle applies to bad things in our lives. We start out with one lie, one drink, one insert your vice here and before you know it, it’s like we never stopped.
Dishonesty and disrespect can spread like a virus*, there are times we all get sick, but there’s less of a chance if we wash our hands regularly.
We get to choose whether we leave, or our values do. So, I left the client, I left the date before it started, and my reward has been the confidence that comes from being ok with not being for everyone.
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