So much of the direction of our life reflects our personality. We see it in our relationships, in our work, in our choices. We play our roles in life firmly based on who we are and who we have always been.

That’s not to say we can’t learn and grow and change along the way. But it feels to me as if our core is our core. We can gain new skills and behaviors but our essence is our essence, innate and also a product of nurture and expectations.

I know that I am a person who wants to make things right. I want to fix problems. I want to smooth things over. I want to make everyone happy. I want peace and harmony and, yes, maybe a bit of all of us holding hands and singing “”Kumbayah.”

That’s not always an option nor has this desire to “make it okay” always served me. I’ve held on too long, I’ve tried too hard, I’ve closed my eyes when they needed to be open. That’s caused me to defer but not to resolve and resolution, for good or ill, often (perhaps always) has to happen.

So we face the hard things. We have no choice. We wrench the word “no” from deep inside when our instinct tells us that “yes” would make the other person happier. We take a deep breath and say words we would rather not say, take actions we would rather not take but know we must.

Over the course of my life, I have faced these situations many times, personally and professionally. I know what I have to do, I know how to do what I have to do and I do it. But it is never without thought or consideration or a wish that it could be different,

We can all do hard things. In fact, we must all do hard things from time to time. But we must never lose sight of our humanity when we do these things, never lose sight of our core beliefs, never lose sight of who we are, living with our full hearts.