69. How to Avoid Nightmare Clients

I went through a phase a few years back where I had a series of terrible clients. It seemed like everyone I was working with was just the worst. It made me hate what I was doing. It made me anxious for the first time in my life. Until then, I didn’t know what anxiety was, but I’m pretty sure not being able to do anything but lay in bed all day is it. I’m pretty sure struggling just to eat food has something to do with anxiety.

For some reason, I couldn’t escape it, and I kept blaming it on this string of nightmare clients. Reality is that not everyone you work with will be a pleasant cup of tea. I knew that, so I just considered myself unlucky.

Except it kept happening.

Everyone I’d take on as a client would be another headache.

It kept happening until I realized it was a pattern with one common denominator.

Me.

Why did I keep stumbling across garbage opportunities and energy sucking people who have a knack for making you wish it was tomorrow already? The only thing I could figure was that it must be me.

It was.

I’m not going to tell you to rush out and buy “101 Essays that will Change the Way You Think” by Brianna Wiest, but it wasn’t until I read it that I think I figured out what was going on.

I always write down 3 takeaways from every book I read, and here’s what I wrote as my number 1 takeaway from this one: