Looking back at all the lives I’ve lived, I can say I waited too. I was scared, felt uncomfortable, and sometimes waited too long.

The business failure took 3 years, and COVID hit before we took action. My first marriage ended, and I knew for 6 years I needed to get out, but I didn’t have the courage to take action. Looking back, deep down, I knew walking down the aisle that it would end badly. But that’s a story for another day.

Here’s the thing about courage. It doesn’t get easier, and taking the first action doesn’t get more comfortable. But courage is like a trained muscle. The more you understand what courage looks like to you, the easier it gets to take that step.

Hack #1 - How to Define Your Worst-Case Scenario

One of the hacks I use to stack courage in my favour is defining your worst-case scenario, and you do it when everything is good in your life. When our business went to shit, my husband was worried that his parents would lose their house, their life savings, and all of us would live under the bridge.

That’s pretty different, right? And with that in mind, making risky, transformative decisions became easier. Every decision we took after that was based on a realistic worst-case scenario, and it made the decisions feel less risky.

Hack #2 - Stop Asking Old Friends for Advice

Nothing in nature is meant to stay the same. Everything changes, tides, seasons, you get the point. So when you feel like change is in order, don’t consult the people currently in your life. They know and like your current version. Jealousy, selfishness, sometimes even love dressed up as concern, it all points the same direction. They want you to stay the same.

Personally, I lost friends for more than one reason. When I got divorced, close friends stopped talking to me because they felt threatened. Like I would jump their partners, because I was single. WTF?

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That’s the bit nobody wants to hear. Everyone expects the crying, the shame, the “how did it all go so wrong.” I had all of that too, don’t worry.

But underneath it, when the liquidation papers were finally signed, and the business was actually, properly gone, the first thing I felt was my shoulders drop. Like I’d been holding my breath for about three years, and someone had finally said I was allowed to breathe out.

We knew our business was dying long before it actually died. For the last three years of it, my husband and I would have the same conversation, quietly, at night, both of us knowing exactly how it ended. But we kept going. Partly because we loved it, and partly because we couldn’t stomach the idea of disappointing his parents, who’d built the thing from nothing. And I married into someone else’s dream. I definitely didn’t want to disappoint my husband by cutting this dream.

Sounds romantic, but deep down it’s a recipe for disaster.

So we treated a dying business like a family member instead of what it actually was, an investment that had stopped paying us back a long time ago. You don’t leave an investment because you feel guilty. You leave because the numbers tell you to.

Then the universe stopped giving us the choice. We sold our house to keep the business breathing. Twelve months later, COVID hit. My husband got diagnosed with chronic fatigue. And we sold what was left of the business with a six-figure debt hanging off it and ten grand to our name. I can’t say we didn’t have a hand in it; we did. We made the calls that got us there. But I also can’t pretend a global pandemic was on our bingo card. Just to be clear, COVID didn’t end our business. It just showed up right when we’d run out of reasons to keep lying to ourselves about it.

This was a long time coming.

The six months after were brutal. Dad was angry we’d “given up.” Suppliers wanted what they were owed. Our whole team was suddenly out of a job. The liquidation process was one of the hardest things we’ve done.

And still, underneath all of it, relief.

Because here’s what I actually learned. The tragedy was never the ending. The tragedy was the three years before it, when we already knew and kept waiting for something else to decide for us. Waiting for the business to magically turn around. Waiting for a good month. Waiting to feel brave enough. Nobody was coming to hand us permission to stop. We had to take it ourselves.

That’s the whole thing, isn’t it?

Clarity comes first, always. Not the fix, not the plan, not even the courage. Just being honest with yourself about what’s actually broken, whether that’s a business, a marriage, a job you’ve outgrown, or a version of yourself you’re still dragging around out of habit.

So tell me. What’s the thing you already know, deep down, that you haven’t said out loud yet?