He just kept looking at me asking “how much do you think it would cost?!”
To do all that… More than he could afford. But here I am, stuck in this conference room.
Swindled into driving across town. Reviewing pages of technical documents. Listening to this guy blabber on for almost two hours. And then his tell…
The sign that he was never really serious:
Price.
It’s all he wants. To satisfy his barbaric urge to know what it would cost him to do what he never intends. Drunk on dead end excitement.
Some people. They want the feeling of taking a risk, but without ever taking it.
But I’m the amateur. I failed to listen to that feeling way down deep on the inside. It was too good. Too obvious. I take responsibility. I too was persuaded by the hot stickiness of opportunity.
Since then, I’ve gotten better. Better at paying attention to that feeling that something ain’t right. It might not be there all along, but once it shows up, hard to ever think clearly again.
I now know that the only reason I sat in that conference room, wasting my time, was because I was scared. Worried that if I didn’t impress this guy, he wouldn’t hire me and then I wouldn’t be hired by anyone else. And so on. Fear of the unknown. Debilitating.
Watch out or it will enslave you.
When the fear hits, pay close attention to how irrational it is.
Always accompanied with this fear is a feeling of imbalance. A voice speaks up in your mind:
“You don’t need this. Walk away. Say no.”
That’s your gut. Trust your gut. Probably the smartest part of your body.
It speaks softly. And it’s easy to ignore or discount or walk all over with all that scared fear. But every bad decision I’ve ever made, my gut has always made itself present.
I have learned to listen more.
Not free of bad decisions by a long shot. But live with far fewer than ever before in my life.
Listen for it. It’s there. You already know the answer.
You already know the way.
Just listen.