I don’t know whether you sew or not, but you probably know the expression “A stitch in time saves nine.”
It originates from the old days when people would mend their clothes as they could not buy replacements so easily as nowadays.
Obviously if you do a sewing repair on time you will save yourself a lot more sewing later. It’s true for any kind of repair in fact. If you’re anything like me, you notice that things are broken in your house, but ignore them until they get into a really bad shape. By which time they require much more fixing that they did at first. And it works not just sewing or building maintenance but also for relationships.
I find this to be true in my vacation rental business. The guests always feel happy when I take the time to welcome them personally. If I don’t meet them on arrival, it is a bad start to their vacation. And then they find things that are not perfect and complain about them. If I don’t deal with these imperfections quickly enough, they exaggerate them to the point of demanding compensation. And all really because I didn’t meet them on arrival.
It happened to me recently and I had to take my own advice that I shared in my newsletter last week. I had to put time into the relationship so that the guests would feel seen, heard and respected. It took a lot more effort that it would have if I had just met them on arrival.
So I have a question for you. What have you been putting off recently? Maybe you are getting some short term benefit from avoiding action at this time. But it’s quite likely that the longer you leave it, the worse the situation will get. And the harder you will have to work to fix it.
Perhaps you’re avoiding doing some physical repairs. Or perhaps it’s a relationship that is suffering. Are you avoiding having a challenging conversation with someone? What would happen if you actually picked up the needle so to speak and started fixing sooner rather than later?
If you’d like any help with this you might like to book a call with me here .
Remember: a stitch in time saves nine!
