But here we have another problem. Every time you have made a small compromise you have always found "reasonable" ( for you ) excuse to justify your action. And because you have justified it and continue doing it, after some time you get used to it and you look at it as something completely normal. And then this becomes your new standard and you don't see it anymore as a compromise. But even though you don't see it anymore as the compromise there are many signs and symptoms which ring the bell very loud and you should stop and reassess the whole situation when you notice them. One of them is a backchat. For example you will be serving your customer, you will smile and you will be very friendly but at the same time you will have some judgmental thoughts about this customer in your mind e.g. "this f...en asshole" etc. In this case your smile will be fake and false. If you don't see those thoughts in your mind ( because quite often it is not easy to see them ) or you don't see anything wrong about it, then some of your friends will eventually tell you about it, because these thoughts will be expressed in your words and you will be bitching about your customers in the conversations with your colleagues.
As I said before if you justify your compromises with different excuses then they become in some way invisible to you - they are visible but you deny seeing them. Nobody is forcing you to do it but you allow it yourself. And here comes another point - self responsibility.
You have to agree with me after reading the first part of this article that everything that happens right from the beginning when you conceived an idea of a business, and then you started to make it happen in real life till the moment of facing the mountain of problems, is totally your responsibility. Every decision that you have made, every compromise that you have allowed has led you to this point of today. If you didn't start the business then you would not be at this point today. Thus it is obvious and clear that you are responsible for everything.
This is the fact but the practice looks different. I will explain again why. Every compromise that you allow carries certain consequences. You may not see it in the beginning or if you see them you are hoping that this will not happen but the fact is that sooner or later you will have to face them. And once you start facing them it will seem as if they were coming from outside. And most probably your first reaction will be of blaming somebody else.
First of all this is separation because of this somebody else is always you. Separation only exists in the mind. Secondly all of those consequences which are sometimes unpredictable are the result and the consequence of your compromises. Thus you are always responsible. But at the same as last time you may not be able to see it so clearly because you have done too many compromises over long period of time and along that you have built up energetic veils in front of your eyes which blur your vision.
Thus you have had a great idea about new business, you've made a perfect plan in your head, you've made a business plan and you have started implementing it in real life. But on the way you have got lost and now you are at the point which is far away from your initial plan because you have allowed the compromises.
And this is what I have seen in the last few days happening in my life. It wasn't done because of greed. I did it because of the necessity to survive but I was at the point of accumulated tiredness and I have seen how easy it is to make decisions which compromise the values. I didn't allow it, I have stopped the pattern before it started to gain momentum and this way I have avoided going through the chain of unpleasant consequences. You can do the same and I tell you with absolute certainty that all the money that you gain while making compromises while later you will be forced to face the consequences of it, is never worth it.
To be continued...