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.

Did you like this video? I certainly did. If you liked it, subscribe and share it with

all your friends. If you want even more awesome resources to create a business and life that

you love, plus some personal insights from me that I only share in email, get those sweet

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Stay on your game and keep going for your dreams because the world needs that special

gift that only you have. Thank you so much for watching and I’ll catch you next time

on MarieTV.