leadership dot #2127: negative

The irrational side of us wants to avoid learning information that we suspect will be negative. We don’t get our cholesterol checked because we fear that the numbers will be high. We pile up the bills instead of opening them if we worry that the checkbook doesn’t have enough funds to cover them. We stay off the scale rather than face the unwelcome number. We skip over that email on an unpleasant topic rather than reading it. We wait until April to look at our taxes because we dread learning how much we owe.

Ignoring unpleasant facts does not change them, rather it just depletes the time you have to remedy the situation. If you owe money, you owe it, regardless of whether you open the mail. And the sooner you know the details, the quicker you are able to make arrangements or develop options to deal with it.

Instead of speculating or avoiding negative news, embrace the knowingas a head start. You’ll have that much more time to reverse the situation if you spend your energy on the remedy instead of the avoidance.