It seems that I have witnessed a number of times people being self-destructive. The "voice in the head" often talked about by Eckhart Tolle is perhaps something to do with it but so many times either knowingly or unknowingly people have made irrational decisions, have lied or avoided situations and then had destruction wreaked upon them or have just talked themselves into it.
My business partner has just done such a thing and what is worse, burnt all his bridges in doing so. In 5 days he went from slightly eccentric to full on madness and wrecked his side of the business he had worked hard alongside me to build.
Another person I worked with decided to (as he was the chief shareholder) demote me as we were about to go to a shareholder's meeting, to the scribe for the meeting. I had worked outhow to save his business as he had bought software that wasn't actually his (the copyright notice for where it had been obtained from was clear for all to see). He hadn't undertaken a key piece of security to have the data encrypted and he was running out of money. As a Director I had produced his "get out of jail free" card and had a presentation to achieve this. The meeting was great as a few knew what I knew, they also knew that I was going to table the answer to the problems.
The idiot started to lie through his teeth and when the meeting got angry and I do mean angry, he finally turned to me and I reminded him that I was no longer the Ops Director and he had made me scribe. As he had done that and was now floundering I left him to it. On the way out he suggested the meeting had gone well. I called him an Oaf and questioned whether a village somewhere was missing their idiot! I resigned that night citing a number of reasons.
Others have talked themselves out of a winning position and ended up in the very place they said they'd been in before - the self fulfilling prophecy.
It helps to break business & personal stuff apart and it helps to analyse what you've got and I feel sorry for my ex-colleague. He never wanted me to "get angry" with out supplier and reined me back as he didn't like confrontation (funny that as he's threatened me in writing). SO now he's gone I read the riot act to our supplier and all of a sudden I have full cooperation and suddenly all of the deliverables are appearing. Coincidence? I think not.
I could probably write a book (I'm sure someone would have got there before me) where defeat is snatched from the jaws of victory. It happens a lot more than you think and I'm a realist rather than the pessimist most people take me for. I am a lot more optimistic than people know, I have to be as I'm a project manager at heart.
Strange how people destroy themselves especially in business. It's almost as if they predict their future and then everything aligns in them to make sure that failure is the end goal both planned and actual.
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