The fear of doing the right thing is the unwillingness to pay the perceived price of putting yourself at risk for the good of another.
Or even for the good of just yourself.
It’s one of the hardest aspects of becoming more responsible.
It’s always easier to take the low road
But the cost of doing so is much higher, sometimes vastly so.
The price you pay to travel the right path eventually pays out far more dividends than the short term gains you get when taking the easy route.
I think most adults already know this to be true.
Acting on it is a different story though.
For all of us. It’s an ongoing process that we improve with time.
When it comes to building any relationship, it is paramount that you keep this ideal up front.
Doing the right thing is based in trust.
Without trust, you have nothing
Or whatever you do have will one day evaporate.
And if you are able to get want you want without this trust, it will be a hollow victory that will cost you, somewhere down the road.
Possibly even more than you can imagine.
Don’t let the fear of doing the right thing hamper your ability to become someone great.
But don’t go overboard in your attempts to stay altruistically pristine, either
One perfect example of this is when you start helping someone who really needs you, only to learn that this person will never release you from your original promise.
They’re called leaches or succubi.
They take…and take…and take…often without ever meaning any harm but they’ll drain you beyond your capacity to recover.
Those of us who problem solve for others find it difficult to stop trying
We’re as doomed as the trout:
- “The Lure” We love the process of finding the answer to a tough problem they bring us.
- “The Hook” We gradually come to want the answer as bad as they do, albeit for different reasons.
- “The Fight” We work tirelessly, giving more than we should, to prove to everyone – most of all ourselves – that we CAN fix this!
- “The Frying Pan” Our passion clouds our ability to make sensible choices regarding the fairness of the value exchange. The work becomes terminal. The pay insufficient.
- “Dishes in Sink/Bones in Garbage” We become good to no one. Our family and business life suffer.
Know when it’s time for a “divorce” and make the cut quickly and cleanly.
There’s often no way to know if you’ve made the right decision until after the fact.
You may hurt some feelings, burn some bridges and lose more than you thought you would.
These are the costs of maintaining your integrity
Wherever you are in your attempt to build something big, something new, something all your own, you’re going to have to face these dragons and slay them.
You deal with “out there” as you build. But you get better at it by improving what’s “in here”.
Like I said, this is ongoing. I doubt anyone’s perfected it.
Increase your willingness to do the right thing at all times (or display a quick ability to repair your screwups) and the world will fall into step with you.
