I just had to fire a friend of mine. I've known him for 15 years, originally from BJJ. but he stopped training years ago so I never see him at the school. I only see him when he comes to take care of my lawn. He's been my lawn guy for like 7 years I think. 

The problem is that he can be hard to get ahold of, and he never does what he says he'll do when he says he'll do it. He's usually off by days, sometimes weeks. If he wasn't my friend, I'd have let him go for this already because chasing the people you hire to work for you defeats the entire purpose of paying for their help. I tolerate it because #1, I don't care that much about my lawn, and #2, he does eventually show up and he's got me grandfathered in at a super cheap rate. 

But even though changing lawn guys will likely cost me more money, I plan to replace him with someone who is more timely and communicates better - thus actually saving me more time and hassle, which makes up for the greater cost. ​

Most recently, he dropped the ball by not finishing a job for me AFTER I had already paid him. I asked him repeatedly for a refund and he gave me his usual answer of "tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow" and by now it's been weeks of time and multiple asks. 

So I'm just going to cut my losses, end the business relationship, and hope to keep the friendship. I'm not the only friend of his that has had to fire him - so it shouldn't come as a surprise - but I might be the only friend who wants to remain friends *after* the firing. So we'll see how he responds.

Here's the text message I sent so you can can see it as an example if you need something like this later on. Feel free to share your opinion if you have one, and the reasoning behind it below.

"Hey man, 
 
I feel I have to let you go as our lawn guy. 

You can keep the $ as a thank you for all the years. 

If there's hard feelings, let me know and we can hash em out bc I still appreciate you as a friend. 
 
I have no personal issues with you at all, I just hate chasing ppl when I shouldn't have to. 
 
I hope we can still be cool going forward."

This was NOT my first draft. 

My first draft listed all the reasons for the firing. But on my second draft I figured he probably already knows the reasons and doesn't need me to throw them in his face. If I'm trying to be friend with him then I don't need to make him feel any worse about the situation. He already shared with me that times are hard for him right now - so I'm trying to be sensitive to that - but times are hard for everyone so it's not much of an excuse. Besides, if he's confused about anything I feel the tone of my message leaves the door wide open for further communication. 

So we'll see. I'm actually expecting him to just say "ok I understand" and that's that. Fingers crossed!

UPDATE!

I never received a response to my text after I sent it. No anger. No word at all. 

Until the following season. 

When spring rolled around again I finally got an apologetic message. He said he was sorry, made no excuses, and asked for another chance. 

However, knowing this might happen I made sure to replace my friend's services almost immediately after I fired him. I had already signed with a new landscaper within a week of letting him go.

I replied to let him know that I'd already found someone else...

... and once again received no response.

My new landscaper turned out to be awesome - and had none of the issues my former one had. In the end, I was very happy with my decision, despite the difficulty. 

... whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt

Here's a short article that provides a little historical context.

So many of us feel like shameful failures when we put effort into things and do not get our desired results. 

You can be disappointed, displeased, or upset...
You can feel motivated to try harder or do better next time... 
You can even feel guilty if you know you chose a less-optimal course of action in the hopes of taking shortcuts or making your life easier...

Each of these feelings will lead you to update your process and re-apply yourself to the task at hand in a more effective manner.

But shame and feeling like a failure are totally NOT helpful and only slow your progress further because they cause you to STOP taking action, or to take LESS healthy action. 

The quote above shows us that shame and failure in the face of a continuous effort do not make sense - the credit belong to the people that are actually striving for something! The people who are putting an effort into improvement! They deserve praise and credit just for trying. Because without trying, there can be no result. 

We have to remember to reward ourselves simply for trying - if we don't do that, it's so much harder to maintain the kind of consistency necessary for the achievement of large goals.

We get points just for trying - just for following the right process or authentically seeking out the right process (vs researching as an excuse to delay actually taking action).

So why feel shame? When we try to follow our processes, we are already doing what we're supposed to be doing - if you're doing what you are supposed to do, why feel shame? Give yourself more credit. 

At the same time, we must remain focused on the PROCESS if we really hope to get CONSISTENT results. The process is itself INHERENTLY a trial and error/guess and test process. Error and "failure" are expected outcomes, and we expect to encounter them much more often than success.

So if "failure" is the most commonly expected result, is it really fair to feel bad about it? Or would it make more sense to stop thinking of it as failure, and instead see it as the default state of the SKILL AQUISITION PROCESS ?

Until you achieve "Mastery" - regardless of how you're defining it - mistakes and undesirable results should be expected as a perfectly natural and non-problematic aspect of trying to learn something new, or getting yourself to act differently/more effectively. 

Shame? That belongs to anyone who dares to criticize your virtuous efforts. They should be ashamed of themselves for allowing their own personal fears to manifest as discouragement towards their fellow human.

And failure? Well you're guaranteed to fail at every task that you do not try. The bigger failure is not the person who has to try 1000 times to be successful. The bigger failure is the person who WANTS but does not DO. Who quits early. Who does not STRIVE. 

So get out there and try!

I always think it's helpful when you can see a coach/mentor/advisor following their own advice, so I'm sharing this with you.

I was recently accepted into a business course presented by one of the best-known business schools in the USA. 

It's a scholarship program, so the course is free, but the requirements are high and took me a couple years to get accepted (you can apply to the program yourself right here). 

I've just completed the orientation week and I'm already very happy that I didn't allow things like fear-induced apathy ("I don't really need this program"), self-doubt ("What if I can't complete the course?"), or my current stress level ("I just don't have time for this") become excuses that stopped me. 

A couple lessons to take away:

"Attraction" is something you FEEL for someone/thing

"Objectification" is something you DO to someone/thing

Attraction springs naturally from someplace inside ourselves. Call it the soul, psyche, subconscious, etc. but whatever you call it we can agree that it just seems to show up out of nowhere. Therefore we must always be as attracted to someone/thing as we feel. 

But if you treat people like OBJECTS, or tools, or "as a means to an end rather than the end itself", THEN you are objectifying them.

Is that always a bad thing? NO! People can mutually consent to objectify one another and that would be fine.

Think of a pick-up soccer/football or basketball game at the park with a bunch of random strangers. In this situation you are looking to have fun by playing the game. It doesn't matter WHO you play the game with. All the other players are simply a means to the end of playing the game. They are serving the function of mere objects to play with/against. 

And since everyone agrees that this is ok, you can all have fun together. The mutual objectification is not a negative thing.

However, I specify "random strangers" above for a reason... 

If you start to actually become friends with those people, now a new layer has been added to the situation. Now you're not only having fun by playing the game, you are having MORE fun by playing the game with those specific friends. At this point you've stopped treating the other players only as objects for your end goals, and instead you seek them out for their personalities and other traits. 

​As you can see from the example above, you're going to get better results if you can treat the objects of your affection as multidimensional human people rather than just objects. It gives you more reasons to do the things you want to do. 

Just like with thoughts, you only have partial control of your feelings. It usually feels like the feeling just shows up on it's own, and then we can attempt to control what we do with the feeling. 

Do we try to ignore it? Do we shame ourselves for having it? Do we appreciate it?

When it comes to an authentic, age-appropriate, feeling of sexual attraction for someone there's no reason to feel shame for it's existence.

If you've heard my "sexual attraction is not impure, in fact it's the MOST pure" rant then you're familiar this concept. 

In most cases, there's no need to try to ignore the feeling either. You can feel it fully and go on with your life without taking any actions on the feeling. We do this all the time when we see an attractive woman pass by and we are unable to approach her for whatever reason. Or when you DON'T buy the latest game system even though you really want to play *Smash Bros Ultimate*...

But if the feeling prompts you to do stupid things, NOW it's time to take some action to prevent harming yourself or others.

Example:

I already know there are plenty of people attracted to my wife. I'm totally fine with this fact. I'm actually proud of it and I think it's fun seeing guys compliment her and demonstrate their affection for her in socially acceptable ways like dancing, fun conversations, sometimes even buying her little "this made me think of you" trinkets or whatever. 

Basically, non-threatening behaviors that reinforce friendship without disrespecting her relationship with me. 

Now, if someone felt that their affection for my wife was reason enough to try to convince her to leave me, or even to have a more intimate friendship with them than would be appropriate, then that person would have to be unceremoniously kicked out of our lives. 

The main reason is not their level of attraction - it's their lack of self-control. Be as attracted as you like! But also BEHAVE. If you can't behave that tells me you can't be trusted and if I can't trust you then there's no basis for friendship.

Problems arise when people believe that the mere existence of a strong emotion is enough reason to assert themselves in situations where either they do not belong, or where the behavior is inappropriate.

• No amount of attraction justifies stalking.
• No amount of attraction justifies lying or manipulating.
• No amount of attraction justifies intentionally harming, threatening, harassing, etc. 

When you guys are out there following my advice to authentically express your desires and attractions for people, I'm NOT telling you to do any of those things listed above. In fact, we are trying our best to avoid even the possibility of being accused of such things! And the best way I've found of doing this is direct, honest communication (which often requires *courage*!). 

Are there some people out there who are so socially maladjusted or raised by their parents so poorly that they would misinterpret a simple expression of attraction as a threat? Sadly, yes there are. 

But fortunately they are the minority - as a decade's worth of both mine and your (my entire student body) experiences can attest to. Most often the people we approach appreciate our polite, complimentary nature and even if they're not interested in dating us they frequently accept the compliment and allow it to brighten their day. Very often we even receive compliments in return and explicit request to "keep doing what you're doing".

So my advice is to not live your life in fear of the anti-social few who would have illogical and uncharacteristically negative responses to an authentic, polite compliment. Doing so would be too paranoid and end up hurting you and limiting your opportunities and life experiences. 

It would be letting the terrorists win! (Any time you're giving in to messages that keep us from treating each other like humans you are letting terror win - never forget that humans evolved to be social animals!)

I know that most of the members of *The Courage Community* would never even DREAM of consciously objectifying someone in a way that caused them harm. You folks are good people and the fact that you're a member here demonstrates that you care enough about your fellow humans to learn how to avoid making those kinds of mistakes. 

But allow me to offer you a little guide to your internal moral compass for those times where the objectification might be subtle or hard to discern...

• If you are in a situation with someone and you realize that you've stopped caring about their opinion on what you're trying to do together, stop and ask yourself if you really want to remain in the situation with that SPECIFIC person, or if ANY person would do.
  
  
• If you realize that ANYONE would do, make sure the other person is thinking of you in the SAME way. If they are treating you like a person and you are treating them like an object then you are setting yourself up for drama and problems later on. This is one of the main reasons that men get in trouble with women.
  
  
• If you find yourself vetoing or overruling someone's opinions/ideas purely out of your emotional desire for a different outcome, then you are probably reducing that person to an object.
  
  
• "Nice Guy" behaviors like offering to pay for things, doing favors, or generally trading your good behavior for the other person's affection. This reduces the situation into a transaction or some type of (often unspoken or assumed) contract. You should be doing nice things ONLY because you are a NICE PERSON and would do those things anyway even if you didn't stand to gain something from them. If you're only being nice because of what you think it will get you then you're not really a nice person.

[NOTE: For this blog post we're not considering the philosophical debate about the existence of altruism which can show that we're ALWAYS acting from our own self-interest. Instead, we're keeping it simple by looking at the timeframe: if you're looking to do short-term trades of favors for specific outcomes then you are objectifying. If you are taking actions in accordance with your own personal virtues such that you do not require an immediate or specific payback then you are being kind.]

Ok, so now we know when objectification is bad or does not work to get us what we want. 

But how can we tell when it MIGHT work and where it would be more appropriate?

As is often my answer, it all depends on DEMOGRAPHICS!

What environment are you in? And what type of person is in that environment?

If you are in a highly sexually charged environment where the implication is that people go there to meet other people for hookups, well I'd say it's fairly safe to assume the other people are looking to objectify you as much as you want to objectify them. 

There do exist venues and events that are extremely sex-positive, or even sex-forward. In places like that, one of your sexiest lines could be "I would objectify you so hard right now..."

I just tried this on Lilly a second ago and she loved it! LOL. Keep in mind how extremely socially/sexually emancipated she is though... it's unusual, but also not so rare that you can't find more women like her if you know where to look.

What about regular clubs/raves/festivals/etc.? 

First off, community memebers already know my opinion on clubs/bars in general - that it's a lie when they imply you are supposed to be going to these places to find sexual partners. They exist to sell drinks - not for any real benefit to you.

That said, if the environment is high-intensity and sexually charged enough (foam parties inside cheap, shitty venues are a fantastic example...) then it's fair to assume there are at least a few people inside who are actually looking for some low/no-investment mutual objectification.

Just keep in mind that being as direct as my example line above will mean that you'll ONLY be attracting that minority of people who want exactly what you want, and scaring off the rest. 

But if all you really want is no-strings-attached fun based purely on physical attraction and nothing else, there's nothing to feel ashamed about, just make sure you're being honest, direct, and in agreement with whoever else is involved.