Weaknesses

A couple of things happened to me last week that point out two of my inherent weaknesses.

So in the interest of full disclosure; here they are:

I don’t like confrontations.

I don’t like to bother people or maybe put better, I don’t want to be a bother to anybody.

Back to last week. I was working on an outside (meaning not for my day job) project for College of the Ozarks. I’m editing a video made of the President speaking to a group of students. For reasons I won’t go into nor for which I know the whole truth and nothing but the truth so … I’ll skip over that part. To try to help this thing along I needed some pictures. There are times in this video when I really don’t have a shot to go to – the shots are either out of focus or both cameras are moving. There are some specific references that lend themselves to showing a related picture. So I went on a hunt for pictures. This led me back to campus to see what I could find.

Fast forward. I ended up in a short meeting with the President and our discussion gave me great insight into what he had done, why and that my suggestion of a “do-over”, was not going to fly. But my point here is that in 15 minutes I solved so many of my problems. I would never have done this without some prodding. I’d have felt like I was being a bother. But others – in this case – my wife, a staff person on campus and a friend very familiar with the school, all pushed me to do something. And the result was good. I just wish I could remember this whenever I shy away from stuff.

This hit me last year with the tornado recovery too. As devastating as the tornado was, I was ready to single-handedly tackle getting things put back together. I had no real clue how but I started making lists: do this today and then this and then this tomorrow. After about one day of this a friend of my daughters; actually our family’s too but I really didn’t know him well. He stopped by to see what he could do and in so many words told me that I needed to just step back and let people help us – help me. Most of my being recoiled at this idea. Somehow admitting I needed help (which I really did) was an admission of weakness when really my real weakness was in letting my pride in this case at least, get in the way of letting other people bless us. And bless us they did.

If it weren’t for the help of dozens of folks, we might still be digging out and cutting up fallen down trees etc.

Now on the confrontation issue, I am loath to confront people. What happens over the long haul is this begins to create a certain level of expectation. Which only makes it harder to ever (finally) stand up and do the right thing and essentially tell somebody off, or let them know they can’t continue to do whatever it is that they are doing. This is particularly significant at work where I think I’ve been too nice for too long and have let people take advantage of that. When I reach the end of my tolerance for certain things, it is very hard to shift gears and convince people I finally mean business and to be taken seriously. This happens with your kids too as I’m learning the second time around as a parent. If you let patterns get established, they are harder and harder to break later on.

So somewhat late in the year and late in the game as an adult and parent and boss etc. I plan to resolve to work on these two things.