What price the prize?

As I was driving the other day, a fly was repeatedly bashing itself against the inside of the windscreen. It could see where it wanted to be, but couldn’t get to it. Each time it moved closer to a window, I pressed a button - offering it a chance of escaping to the left or the right. It took neither, but carried on beating its head against a glass wall.

It took me right back to a conversation earlier in the week, about the importance of stage-gates in any development or change. Adding pauses in to any change can seem like a waste of time and energy when you’re committing so much, but when you’re committing so much time, energy, and maybe even money, then its even more important to ‘be sure you’re sure’.

Whatever the case for the change at the beginning, there may well be a point where it stops being worth it. At least in the form you had in mind. Similarly, no matter how much you want something, if its not going to happen (at least not in the way you planned), no amount of throwing energy (or money) at it is going to make it worthwhile.

I can’t talk details about the case from last week, but I can talk about our family trip to a Christmas fayre the other day.

They had a sweetie jar, tombola style, stand, at £1 per ticket. My daughter has a food allergy, so in those circumstances she is not guaranteed to get something she can enjoy. She weighed up the risks and the potential rewards and decided it was worth it, reasoning that it was my money and she could always gift it to a friend if she couldn’t eat them.

She won a jar, and was bubbling with excitement when it looked like she would be able to eat most of them. We left the venue with her skipping down the road and she opened up the jar in eager expectation.

In a gesture of misplaced festive spirit, it had been filled with glitter. She put her hand in and pulled out a cloud of glitter and a lollipop. The face suddenly showed less joy and more horror... She wiped her hands to try and free them of glitter and attempted to open the wrapper carefully but, in the end, the lollipop she had chosen was indeed covered in glitter and not edible in its current form. Presented with a choice of bin it or try and clean it, she grabbed some more wet wipes and decided she was going to work for it.

Two wet wipes down, the glitter not fully gone but now joined by bits of torn wet wipe, she burst in to frustrated tears. This was not what she had signed up for when she handed over her (my) £1 coin and it no longer felt worth it.

She was presented with her third choice, and decided two more wet wipes worth of effort was her limit and then she was done. She managed it. She enjoyed the lolly, but she elected to delegate the cleaning of the remaining sweets from glitter to her mother...

Why am I writing about this? Cost/benefit analysis and risk/reward assessments aren’t always about money, and the judgement you made at the beginning that lead you to commit to a change or an investment, isn’t always valid as the journey progresses. It shouldn’t be scary to review whether the prize is still worth the price. The assessment you made at the beginning, you can just review it, and make it again based on what you know now. Sometimes it comes up with a different answer.

Some key things to remember:

- Keeping going regardless doesn’t always work;

- Stopping isn’t always ‘giving up’;

- Most importantly, there might be another, better, way to reach the end goal and it might make more sense to switch to that one instead.

Situations / conditions can change and can alter the course of any journey. It’s always better to stop than to carry on and do something wrong.

As always, if something is troubling you, please consider whether you think you would benefit from getting relevant support. https://helplines.org/helplines/

© Highcroft Writing 2021