I asked myself a question on my walk the other night. Am I the problem?
And the honest answer, more often than I would like, is yes. Probably. Especially lately, because I have found my voice, I have decided my own worth, and I have figured out what real boundaries look like. So yes, I am a problem to some people now. And I am okay with that. I will keep being that problem as long as I need to, for people to respect my boundaries, even the ones who do not respect me.
But that is not really where this is going. I am telling you I asked myself that question because I want you to ask it too.
Are you the problem?
Have you actually sat down and looked at the situation you are in, the problems you keep having, the things you keep going through, and asked yourself honestly, is the common denominator me?
Here is what I see all the time. Somebody says, you would not believe what happened to me. And then a few weeks later, you would not believe what happened to me. And again. And again. Same situation on repeat, just with different faces. At some point you have to stop and ask, how do I make this stop happening? Is there a part of this I am bringing on myself?
I am not here to shame anybody for the hard things that happen to them. Some things are just done to you, full stop. But I believe in personal accountability, and if you cannot step back and find the part that is yours to own, you are going to have a hard go of it. Because there is always going to be another problem. There is always going to be another issue. And if your answer is always that everyone else did this to you, nothing changes.
Let me make it real, because I live this.
If I am mad at my team over and over because something is not getting done, but I have never once told them that thing is not getting done and that it is what is frustrating me, that is not on them. That is on me. I own that.
If our training at the office is not good enough, and we are losing good technician after good technician, and I cannot put my finger on why, it is my job to figure out why. To audit it. To sit with it and be honest about where we are failing them. It is a whole lot easier to say those technicians just did not work out. It is a whole lot harder, and a whole lot more useful, to ask whether we set them up to.
That is the difference. That is the whole thing.
Now I will tell on myself a little. A lot of the time when I dig into a problem honestly, it comes back to me not saying the thing. I am a recovering people pleaser. For years my answer to almost everything was, I do not care, whatever you want, because I just wanted everyone happy at the end of the day. And then I would be frustrated that people did the thing I never told them not to do. I never said I did not like it. I never actually said no. I just said, whatever works. That is on me too.
I say recovering because I do not do that as much anymore. I say the things that need to be said now, because it is exhausting not to. And to be clear, that does not mean being a jerk. I am not telling you to go tell everyone to screw off. I am telling you that you can stand up for what you believe is right and still take ownership of your part. Those two things live together. The strongest people I know do both.
So I need you to actually do this. Not skim past it. Look at the thing you keep running into, the one that keeps happening, and answer me honestly.
Are you the problem?
Most of the time, if I am honest, the answer for me is at least a maybe. Sometimes it is a flat yes. And if your answer is even a maybe, then we have got some work to do. That is not a bad thing. That is the good news, actually. Because the parts that are yours are the parts you can actually change.
I will see you on the next walk.
Jen