DEAR SOMEONE ELSE’S MOM: I have a good friend who is in fact quite a good carpenter. However, he is also not a very realistic planner and is often launching into overly ambitious projects that end up costing him or someone else up front and never see the light of day or are started and beyond his talents or means to complete.
Advertisement
I see how very frustrated he becomes and have done my best to encourage him to scale back his ambitions to more realistic goals, but he will do as he will, and now several mutual friends and his own cousin are angry with him because of the work he started on their behalf but failed to finish or didn’t come through on as promised.
What, if anything, can I do to help my friend dial down the scope of his projects to a more realistic scale? --- AIMS TOO HIGH
DEAR AIMS TO HIGH: It’s easy to get carried away with an idea of how something should turn out, and often much harder to make reality match that vision.
It’s time to have a candid discussion with your friend and let him know that he needs to step back and complete the projects he’s already started before he takes on any new ones.
If he can be persuaded to see at least a few of them through, it might give him a boost in confidence, rather than the blows to his ego he must get from the complaints he hears from his dissatisfied family members and friends.
Smaller steps are more likely to get him to the finish line with perhaps less frustration and unnecessary expense in the end.