Marie: Hey it’s Marie Forleo and you are watching MarieTV, the place to
be to create a business and life you love and today is Q&A Tuesday, but get this, I
have a question for you: does this sound upset you?
Ah, crickets, the deafening silence that occurs when someone doesn’t respond to our email,
phone call or text or in some way fails to acknowledge that we exist.
Maybe it’s after a first date or a job interview or maybe you’ve reached out to a big shot
in your industry.
Basically any situation that has you asking, we've all been there, right?
Double and triple checking spam, asking our friend to text us to make sure there's nothing
wrong with our phone, basically wondering what's wrong with us?
Why did that person not get back to us?
Here’s what being blown off really says about you: nothing.
Absolutely stinking nothing.
The hard truth you need to hear is this: the vast majority of the time when someone blows
you off or they fail acknowledge that you exist, most of the time it’s not about you.
Really.
One of my favorite books of all time is Don Miguel’s The Four Agreements and agreement
number two is don’t take anything personally.
When Don says anything, he actually means everything.
Don’t take praise personally, don’t take criticism personally, and don’t take anything
anyone says or does personally.
Don’t even take anything you say to yourself personally.
That’s both deep and confusing, but helpful.
Let me share a story from my own life as an example.
There was this team of people that I really wanted to work with.
I read articles about them, watched interviews and totally devoured their website.
So I built them up in my head as THE people I had to work with, so I sent them an email
and I was really hoping for a fast response.
What happened?
You guessed it.
Finally, a response came back but it wasn’t exactly what I wanted to hear.
These guys were swamped; they had zero bandwidth and basically told me I had to wait two to
three months.
Two to three months?!
Immediately I took that as some kind of personal rejection like I wasn’t big enough or cool
enough to be worthy of their immediate attention.
Fast forward eight weeks and I could not get these people out of my mind, but I didn’t
want to seem like a needy little beotch and in my head I was saying “If they don’t
want to talk to me, I don’t want to talk to them.”
Thank God the non-egotistical part of myself piped up and said “Hey Marie, why not reach
back out and check in?
Maybe they really do want to work with you but they were just swamped, kind of like you
often are.”
So I got over myself and sent them a short email checking back in.
Hot damn, wouldn’t you know it?
They got back to me within 20 minutes and they were super pumped and really thankful
that I followed up.
So my point is this: them being nonresponsive in the beginning had nothing to do with me;
they were really swamped and they had less than zero bandwidth.
It was not personal like most things in life and thank goodness I followed up.
The next time you feel insignificant, ignored or like nobody likes you, here are three things
you should keep in mind:
#1 - Don’t take anything personally.
We gots to be down with some Toltec wisdom and yes, it’s a tweetable:
“Taking things personally is the maximum expression of selfishness.
It makes the assumption everything is about me.”
Most of the time, people not responding has nothing to do with you and if you tell the
truth now more than ever, people are drowning in overwhelm, so don’t make it about you
and just realize all of us are doing the best we can at any given time and none of us are
perfect at it.
#2 – Put the shoe on the other foot.
Think about how many times you haven't gotten back to someone because maybe you straight
up forgot.
You were overwhelmed.
Maybe you didn’t have an answer for them and it started to take some time and it just
slipped through the cracks, or maybe you didn’t answer them for so long and the guilt snowballed
or what about this: maybe you never got the communication in the first place.
#3 – Follow up nicely.
A friendly follow up is often really appreciated.
Here's the thing: don’t make the person wrong for not getting back to you in the first
place.
Don’t say, “I sent an email but I never heard back from you.”
Do say, “Hey there, just a friendly follow up.
I know you're really busy and this email may have slipped off your radar…”
Being kind and compassionate and understanding in your follow up really goes a long way.
Now before we wrap this up, I know what some of you are thinking; “But Marie, sometimes
it is personal.”
I mean, all of us have gotten long, crazy, inappropriate and sometimes down right annoying
voicemails and emails.
Now if you suspect that you need to improve your communication skills, go for it, but
since you are a smarty pants MarieTV viewer, I'm going to make the assumption that you
are not sending stuff out like that.
So for our purposes, don’t take anything personally is completely on point.
Now I want to turn it over to you and this week we have a two-part challenge.
First up, for the next 48 hours, I want us all to challenge ourselves not to take anything
personally, not the good stuff and certainly not the bad stuff.
I know this is easier said than done but it’s a really important muscle to build, especially
if you're up to big things in the world.
Second, what's one example where you took something personally only to later find out
that the crazy drama you made up in your head was totally not true?
Tell me about it in the comments below.
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.