Each year, in Lahore, Pakistan, the Punjab Youth Festival features a variety of extreme and odd competitions. In one, martial arts practitioner Mohammad Rashid set a new speed record for breaking walnuts by smashing his forehead on them, the walnuts lined up on a table, he smashing his head down from a leaning position: 155 walnuts shattered in 60 seconds.

I hold the slow record for banging one’s head against things.

It’s a fair description of much of my business life. But it is also an exercise I strive to avoid and have gotten better and better and better at doing so, as years have passed.

Just for example, I recently declined a potentially high value, ‘whale’ referral from a friend – gently explaining that I was not interested in big, dumb companies run by committees, where I would have to start convincing skeptics.

Reaching way, way back in time, I was, even then, fairly decisive and quick about exiting bang-head-against-wall situations. After the successful guy I was working for sold his company to a publicly listed Australian corporate I pretty quickly exited and I switched to a business using many of the same skills and strategies, but where my pay relied only on others’ consumption.

As a consultant, the first time I fired a client was in 2007, when I could ill afford it financially. The last time I fired a non-compliant client was about 10 weeks ago.

No matter how cautious, tough-minded, avoidance-minded and swift sword swinging, overall, in a broad sense, my time has still been about banging my head against walls.

The business of getting other people to think better yields something between a 1% and 5% success rate. It’s 95% exercise in futility. And that leaves lumps. They never completely recede either.

A lot of businesspeople unnecessarily bang their heads against walls, in many different ways. You have to be ever-vigilant, stop yourself or catch yourself, and act decisively when you do find yourself engaged in such self-punishment.

Many stay on un-fertile land as if rooted there. They suffer fools, corporate political animals in their employ, procrastinating endlessly over the inevitable.

And so on.

Ultimately, only you can call you on your head banging. Only you can decide what of it is inescapable and worth living with. But no one else will step in and make you see what of it you can put an end to, either.

Most attempts to liberate others fail; most hopes of being liberated by others disappoint.

Liberty is personal.