Don't Beat Yourself Up If You Didn't Know
And stay curious about what more you can learn.
I had to part ways in business with a friend this week.
It felt hard and bad to do. In fact, I was stressed and weepy for the day and my stomach was in knots. But the decision was a right one. We were working on a project together, and my inner compass knew at some point that she wasn’t the right fit for this job. We can always wish we listened to the signs earlier, but we know when we know. I kept thinking that it’s okay for there to be complaining, and negativity even when it didn’t land well in my body. The conundrum was I know this person loves me to their core. In fact, their love for me was what prevented them from knowing they were not right for the job. So they kept trying to show up, and it was oozing out of them their discomfort in being in a place they didn’t want to be.
It’s interesting what we can’t see until someone else points it out which is why we need trusted advisors in our lives to guide us. A close friend of mine who has heard me talk about this scenario suggested that perhaps someone else would be better for the job.
“You mean move on from them?” I said, slightly shocked I didn’t think I had other options. That I had agency to make a different choice.
“It happens, and it’s okay,” she said.
You would think I knew this, having moved on from situations in the past that didn’t work, but sometimes we have blind spot areas. Then I knew in every fiber of my bones that her perspective was right. My chest unclenched and I didn’t have a hopeless feeling because the work wasn’t getting done in a successful way. I could find another path. I felt some relief. So of course I wanted to call this person and end the relationship that moment. I knew I had to. If I waited, I would come up with reasons so I gave myself permission to do what I call the “Moneyball.”
If you haven’t seen the movie Moneyball written by Alan Sorkin than I suggest you rent it asap. Brad Pitt is a lower end baseball manager, who teaches his underling how to fire/trade a player. He shows him how the player comes in, there is no emotion, he tells him he’s traded, and gives him a card of who to call to figure out the details. Then Pitt sits back and is quiet. It gives the player no room to get mad, or emotional. The conversation is over.
I called my friend and stated that it wasn’t working out and we needed to part ways. I listened to her perspective and worked very hard to not chime in. At one point, I did feel triggered when she said she did everything for my best interest and I pointed out in some cases that was not how it landed. She said she appreciated my feedback. We quickly concluded our business relationship and I set out to find someone else for the job. I went into a mode I am good at - action under pressure and fire.
It wasn’t until today that I felt more of the impact of the severing of the professional relationship which I knew wasn’t permanently affected but for now temporarily was a bad feeling. I knew she wasn’t happy to be fired but I also had some feelings of irritation that she didn’t admit she was wrong for the job earlier on. Once I started to interview other people, I saw there were so many more people qualified.
Why do we not know these things when we need to know them and have to have the lesson? I have been pondering this all afternoon because I want to know when I had the notion this wasn’t working and how long I went before listening to the advice of someone outside the situation. I tracked back correspondence and saw that really it had been about a week and a half when I started to feel the real impact of the job in the wrong hands. But I also knew that I was being given product that wasn’t where I was hoping it would be longer before that. I made excuses of course and when I offered some feedback, was told essentially this is the way it needs to be.
I accepted that until I realized there is always another way.
I am not suggesting we break contracts at any moment of a storm, or be disloyal to people if they are having a tough moment in their lives but if you know that the course of a project you are passionate about is not sorting out how you would like, you do yourself and the other person a favor by calling it. Time is valuable and we all should be where we need to be, not limping along in an area that is not our strong suit.
People have said to me, “This is why I don’t work with friends…” but I don’t think that is always the case. I know lots of people who have been very successful working with their friends, but it’s less about the friendship and more about the shared rhythm. This friend and I were not in a rhythm and also expectation of how I wanted to be communicated with and the positivity I wanted around me was not the same energy she was exuding. Maybe she is going through a rough patch in her life. Empty nesting? Menopause? We all have these weepy moments or transitional patches where we may not show up as our powerful selves for good reason. We are feeling down, or stripped away from what we used to be, or becoming something better which still feels slippery and yucky at times. But she didn’t share so I can’t guess. I am not a mind reader.
What I applaud myself about is that in the midst of this change in who I am working with I am aware there are feelings. I am doing the work to keep the project on task, but I am also feeling the heaviness of firing someone. How companies can lay off so many thousands of people and not feel the heaviness of that? I am completely empathically gutted after one person. I can’t imagine what it must feel like to let go of four hundred people. I guess many company founders are removed and don’t know their people. They should.
Companies are firing and cutting people every day - Intel is undergoing significant workforce reductions, cutting about 24,500 employees—or 15% of its staff—by the end of the year. And how about good ol’ AI coming in and taking human jobs? Salesforce will cut nearly 4,000 additional jobs as it implements AI in the workplace. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff cuts customer service jobs in favor of AI agents but insists humans are still needed in the function. I know that these cuts are for the bottom line of the company, but that’s a lot of people. When I got on layoff tracker (because I really rabbit holed on this), I was shocked how many people are getting laid off or fired every day. Paramount, now operating as Paramount Skydance Corporation following its merger with Skydance Media in early August 2025, is planning a significant round of layoffs. The company is preparing to eliminate approximately 2,000 to 3,000 jobs by early November 2025 as part of a push to achieve $2 billion in annual cost savings.
I didn’t want to sever ties to one person but needed to do so because my bottom line was being affected and putting me in a challenging position to stay afloat financially. I needed to see if there was another option.
Am I any different than these companies seeing if they can protect their bottom line without certain employees?
Yes, I decided that my working relationship with one human wasn’t working so I am planning on giving that employment to another human. I am not sweeping away entire lives and people’s well being. I can feel the collective fear inside when I read about all these jobs being taken away from people and how we better start giving ourselves permission to think about what we can do outside major corporations and start figuring out how to create a new financial infrastructure that feeds, clothes and pays us because this middle class life is dwindling.
Because these fat cats are only taking care of themselves.
This may have been one of the most depressing column posts I have written in a long time if ever. I apologize, but since I show up here twice a week and I can’t just put a happy face on if I don’t have one, you get to see my insides today. I feel like the world is a little topsy turvy but on the plus side everyone in my family is healthy and happy. I have a place to live and friends, God and a church I love and prosperity in that I can eat.
Yesterday at the corner, I rolled down the window and gave a man in a wheelchair a dollar. I really just wanted to chat with him in case he was lonely.
“Watch out you might get a ticket,” he said, peering in the car at my daughter.
“For what?” I said.
“For having more than one pretty girl in the car.”
We laughed, and then I asked about him and he said he had five daughters and a grandson. I thought, where are they? Why is he on the corner, begging for money, in a wheelchair?
In the midst of making hard decisions about ending working relationships with people or deciding to stop pushing for something that’s not working, there are so many people out there in the world who need to have a conversation, who want to be seen. I feel so much better about my problems when I lean in and talk to other people.
I feel like God sends me down the right path in my own life because for one minute I stopped thinking about myself and looked in someone else’s direction.
Good Lord, I am all over the place in this column today. I feel uprooted and off, and as I told my partner, as an alcoholic in recovery, we tend to believe when we go through a emotional downturn, it doesn’t matter if yesterday was perfect or last week was awesome and we had all the time to exercise and self care and sleep. The minute the shit hits the fan, we believe it’s all going to be that way. Forever. Which is not true. Which is why we go to meetings and talk about our black and white thinking. Because I was deliriously happy on Monday, and I bet I will get back there soon.
So I once had a podcast a few years back called You Should Write A Book About That. I had a lot of fun and did 92 episodes and then I got tired of it and evolved into other aspects of my life that needed that time. I took my own advice, though, from that podcast and have been writing a book on permission and a delicious life for the “sandwich generation.” Then I felt called to podcast again! (never say never) I put three in the can this week and I am wildly shocked I actually am doing a podcast not about books or writing but about permission and how to have a life as a woman that is guilt-free and not doing shit on our calendar that we don’t want to do. I feel like I am going to get caught at being an imposter, but I am following the flow.
When the podcast releases I will shout it out here for all of you to hear on Apple and You Tube.
You start a podcast and a new career, and you stop working with a friend all in the same day. Life is topsy turvy and you get to feel all of it. We have to show up to all the parts of life. The news, the kids, the thrills, the sadnesses. We get to give ourselves permission to handle all of it.
Consider becoming a paid member of my podcast. I don’t have the energy to sell you more on it. Ending a working relationship zapped it all out of me.