The title of this chapter is “End Denialâ€. While it did have a lot to do about you having to take accountability for the results that you generate, from what I gathered it had a lot to do about stubbornness too. Cloutier gave examples where there was a business that was going down fast financially and that the owner kept wanting to stick to the old ways of doing things. Afterwards, they started to receive advice and direction that actually turned things around. So it should have been a no-brainer that the new things worked.
However, the person seemed apprehensive about this still and tried to find other ways to discredit these directions so that the person could go back to their old ways of doing things. For example, it’s kind of like a person telling you that to save money all you need to do is shop from a certain store that sells the same products for less. Hence, you then save a ton of money.
You are so stubborn about wanting to shop at the original place that you try to convince yourself that it’s better to shop in weird ways. Example, you mention that you saw the person get irresponsibly drunk one day and so you use that as an excuse to not follow his advices anymore. Hence, it’s the denial and you go back doing what you did before and of course the debt returns.
As well, Cloutier mentions that procrastination is “denial’s best friendâ€. He compares it with an example of a kid that doesn’t want to eat his vegetables first and instead leaves it last where it can get all cold and unappetizing to the point where you will just dump it to the side. He says that many business owners do this daily with many things.
Near the end he gives you this self quiz that you can take to determine how qualified you are to run a business when it comes to your “denial†level. Basically, if you say you can run and manage a business yet your answers would beg to differ then you are not in the right state of mind to run one.
This was mostly common sense stuff I think and nothing was really surprising to me in reading this chapter.