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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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.