The hardest part of a tough phone call is the first minute. After that you’re just talking.
RESILIENCE
WHAT THIS MEANS
Dread concentrates almost entirely in the opening, before the other person has said anything and while the whole call exists only as a prediction. Once it is underway, it becomes an ordinary exchange with pauses and ordinary sentences. The imagined version is worse than every real one.
Make the call you have been rescheduling, and make it early in the day. Have your first sentence ready so the start is not improvised. After sixty seconds it will be a conversation like any other.
A QUESTION TO SIT WITH
Which call have you been putting off all week?
MORE IN COURAGE & RISK
- Reaching out again after last time went badly takes courage. People change, and sometimes timing was the problem.
- Standing firm while a whole crowd disagrees with you is scary. Checking you’re right first makes it easier.
- Bravery rarely feels heroic. Usually it feels like shaky hands and a dry mouth and doing it anyway.
Free, with nothing to buy inside it.