Marie: Hey, it’s Marie Forleo and you are watching MarieTV, the place to be
if you want to create a business and life you love.
And this is Q&A Tuesday.
Today’s question comes from Kelly and she writes:
“Hi Marie.
A local civic group I'm involved with asked me to write curriculum for a girl’s mentorship
program.
I agreed because I was only going to school and working part time and I thought I had
enough time to do a great job.
But since then, I was offered a great full time job and between that, school, the internship
associated with my school program, I'm burned out.
I barely see my friends and family, my waistline is steadily growing and that damn curriculum
is staring me down in the face.
I don’t want to flake on a commitment I've made and potentially harm my professional
reputation, but I'm completely overwhelmed.
How do you know when to suck it up and try harder or to call it quits?
Gratefully, Kelly.”
Kelly, this is an awesome question, something all of us can relate to.
I don’t know anybody who hasn’t overcommitted including myself.
Now every situation is so different.
I don’t know your timeline, I don’t know your history, I don’t know a lot of facts
besides what you’ve shared, so while I can't tell you what to do, what I can do is help
you make the right decision for yourself, I can give you a script to back out gracefully
if that’s what you really want to do, and most importantly I can teach you a simple
trick to stop overcommitting in the first place.
Lets start at the top.
Is backing out a habit for you?
Are you always flaking on your commitments?
In other words, are you the cancel queen?
You need to look inside and get real honest with yourself.
If you are always pulling this kind of thing, it’s time to stop flaking out and just get
it done.
If you choose to go this route, you just have to suck it up and make it happen; that means
don’t procrastinate and no dramatization.
Set yourself an amount of time and just do it.
If you need a little help with this, I've got a great article below called How to Double
your Results and Work Less.
It’s an article that I actually wrote after creating a webinar for Tony Robbins and I
know it'll help you.
When those times come that you do need to back out gracefully, remember that honesty
is the best policy.
I know it’s really tempting to tell those little white lies in these kind of situations,
but don’t do it.
Everyone’s done that, including myself, but I have a policy now of only telling the
truth.
Why?
Because you can never go wrong with the truth.
People respect it and you respect yourself.
Remember this and you bet your bottom dollar it’s a tweetable:
“Honesty is the best solution for cleaning up a sticky situation.”
Most of the time I prefer to have these kind of conversations in-person or over the phone,
but email may be best so use your own judgment.
Here's a little script as a guideline to get your started.
I'm writing with a sticky situation today.
As you know, back in September, I agreed to write the curriculum for the girls’ mentorship
program.
When I said yes, I fully believed I have the bandwidth to do a great job.
In October, though, I was lucky enough to get a full-time position.
While this is amazing, it also drastically changed my schedule.
It pains me to say this, but I need to step down from this commitment.
The girls deserve an incredible curriculum and I’m sorry I’m not able to deliver
as I thought I would.
I apologize for causing the program an inconvenience and, likely a delay.
Let me know if there any questions I can answer, or any other way I can support the program
moving ahead.
Finally, here’s how to stop getting yourself into these kind of situations in the first
place.
This is one of my favorite pieces of advice of all time, especially if you're addicted
to overcommitting.
You need to pack your bags and get yourself a first class ticket on
the No train.
If
you haven't heard of the No train, all it means is that you give yourself permission
to make no your first response to requests on your time.
You can do this for a set amount of time or you can do it forever, as long as it takes
for you to break the pattern of overcommitting.
Sometimes just saying no out right isn’t really appropriate, so you can say this: “You
know what?
Let me think about it and I’ll get back to you in a few days.”
Kelly, thank you so much for asking.
Let us know how it goes.
Now I would love to hear from you.
Have you ever struggled with whether or not to back out of something really important?
How did you make that decision and what was the outcome?
For bonus points, I would love to hear what's the silliest white lie that you’ve ever
told to back out of something?
As always, the best discussions happen after the episode over at MarieForleo.com so go
there and leave a comment now.
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Thank you so much for watching and I’ll catch you next time on MarieTV.