In business, friendships, political affiliations, and even marriages, sometimes walking away is the best thing for everyone involved. But so often we wait way too long before making that difficult decision. And we’re all guilty of it. Lord knows I am. It’s natural. The thought of walking away from something you’ve put so much effort into is admitting you’ve wasted those long hard hours. It’s admitting you’ve failed.
Sadly, for failed partnerships, the indicators of failure were probably there all along. But we, indebted as most are, simply resist. We make excuses to not walk. We work hard at fixing the unfixable. This is often because we lack an alternative. “This venture is all I have” mentality forces us to work ever harder at fixing the unfixable when we should have been working on the next big thing.
How do you fix this? First be honest with yourself. If it ain’t working, it ain’t working. Don’t think of it as a failure, think of the venture as a wrong turn that is standing in the way of truly profitable efforts. After all, you wouldn’t keep going in the wrong direction after discovering you’ve made a wrong turn, would you? No, you get off that wrong road and on the right one. And like in business, the longer you go down that wrong turn, the longer it will take to double back and get to your destination.
So, if you’re worried about losing face, forget about it. The longer you wait, the worse the face. If you’re concerned you have nothing else, you never will, until you get off that lame horse and start looking for new opportunities. And there are always new opportunities for those looking.
