This article and the next are borne out of both my own mistake and the mistakes made by a service company.

Let’s Deal With My Own Mistake First

As we (Paul and I) were in a stressful and frustrating situation, with our lives on hold and only waiting for one thing to happen before we could completely move forward again, desperation set in after 13 weeks. We had to make a decision on picking up a new service provider (SP). We had already met, and were happy to work with, one SP1. Then we looked at another service provider, SP2. I had asked a question regarding belief systems, a subject which is very important to me. When I asked them both the question, SP1 was slightly unsure and SP2 was very sure when they answered. So we chose to work with SP2.

At this point I usually check out any Red Flags* and my instinctive gut feel. From the beginning of our working relationship, SP2 was flying a number of Red Flags and they appeared more and more as the weeks rolled on. Some of the Red Flags were; SP2 turned up 3 hours late for an appointment and I had to phone to find out where they were, one and half hours into this 3 hour period; SP2 also never returned calls from either Paul or I. We always had to phone.

However on this occasion as desperation set in, I totally ignored my very good instinctive intuition. In business, I would not expect any of my customers to go through what we were being put through. Neither would I ever accept it from a SP in my business life, so why was I allowing this to happen in my personal life?

This was to be a very big and expensive lesson for us to learn from. It was brought home to me that, in business, I had learned to be less emotional and to listen to my gut feel, focusing on facts when making big decisions. Also using fairness, looking for any incongruence and using my intuition has led me to make very good business decisions. In this situation in my personal life, however, I was still using total emotion to drive my decisions and was ignoring Red Flags, intuition and expectations.

Paul is usually also a good source of practicality and objectivity; however the emotional roller coaster we had been on over the last few months had taken its toll on him too.

It is good to reflect and know that by using some simple but effective techniques you make better decisions. I held my hands up to our new SP1 and admitted that I had made a big mistake by not going with them in the first place and would they work for us. They agreed and we feel very happy and in perfectly capable hands. The communication and teamwork we now have has brightened our moods no end. We’re back on top and feeling very positive again because we have learned from a very difficult situation and then put it right.

*Red Flags – just in case you have not come across this phrase before – are things that are incongruent with the situations, events or what is being said. They usually make you feel uneasy or unsure. Things just don’t seem to add up.