If you have kids, you may be in that phase where you’re their hero. You can do no wrong.
Or maybe things have moved on for you – to a different phase.
Ok – you may have changed yourself too – but your kids’ perceptions of you naturally change – even if you don’t change.
When my kids were younger, they laughed at my silliness. Now they’re prone to being embarrassed by it.
The world around us is constantly changing. People’s perceptions of us are constantly changing. Sometimes those perceptions change because of things that we do – stuff we control.
But often not.
You have far better things to do with your time than to be consumed by trying to be liked/popular with lots of different people. Or to let yourself be perpetually yanked on the end of others’ chains.
And so it is in business.
A simple example to illustrate. Imagine the client from hell. Who cannot be pleased no matter what you do. Whether it’s just the way they naturally are, or whether they’re just constantly looking to manipulate their providers, you cannot win.
So you’ve a choice. Persist fruitlessly in trying to please them or adopt a different approach.
That approach might be to “fire” them as a client. Or to tell them what’s acceptable (or not) from this point forward.
This blog was prompted by a quote I saw recently: “Pluto used to be the 9th planet of the solar system until 2006 when scientists removed it from the list and declared it as a dwarf planet. But Pluto continued orbiting the sun as before. Pluto doesn’t care what others think about it. Be like Pluto.”
How are you doing on that front? On being like Pluto?
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