Last year I blogged about change and how it’s often the most difficult thing for human beings to go through and late last year I wrote about changing my life and the many things I had changed on the way.

Following ideas with a passion may seem so easy when you start out on your journey, but what do you do when you realise you’re not on the right track, you’ve made some unwise decisions, that you may very well be wrong and the ideas you so passionately embraced are unsustainable. You say you’re wrong of course, or do you? The problem for many is that the second most difficult thing to do, is admitting defeat.

Last week I had the pleasure of meeting with a charity I love and supported whilst living in Europe. A charity with a successful concept, great success in Europe and one which they have already rolled out in Hong Kong. The question that the Hong Kong-based arm of the charity had, was why their European success story was not working as successfully in Asia?

After spending an hour walking through business plans, target audience, added value, profitability, etc, we realised a couple of things were different. The charity had not built the network in Asia that they had in Europe and they had become so focused on doing good in the community, that they’d forgotten how to run a profitable business. The charity is now taking some relatively easy steps to ensure a sustainable business model. The first step however was admitting that something was ‘broken’.

What do we do when the passion we had for ideas, people, places or things, wanes? It’s what we do with this knowledge that’s so important. Do we continue arrogantly, holding onto our old ideals, or do we swallow our pride, knowing that ultimately ‘Pride comes before a fall’. Whilst on the surface, it seems that pride doesn’t necessarily hinder success, I maintain that pride is every bit as destructive to anyone’s welfare as the the ancient proverb forewarns.