Your Monthly Dose of Honesty

As a college professor teaching Communication (Speech) in local Florida colleges/universities, I needed to teach a lot of big concepts, quite quickly, to a group of students who often came from varying points of reference and even varying comfort/confidence with the English language.

Imagine normal public speaking anxiety paired with self-consciousness around the language you need to present in. It was a lot. I always tried to go by the "rule of threes." This could relate to the speech having an: introduction, body, and conclusion, or to the body of the speech having three main points. It was an easy, repeatable reminder of the goals/expectations.

Another concept I taught often was Persuasion and the fact that you could articulate a compelling argument in just 3-5 minutes. Some ways to achieve this were obvious: explain to the audience how good things could be if your idea or solution was adopted or how bad things could be if this issue or debate was left ignored.

The more complex way of persuading included a combination of the two. If this is your area of passion, I apologize how brief these explanations were. As I mentioned - I needed to be concise to make it easy for all students to grasp.

Fast-forward to the time in my life when I worked as an Account Manager at a marketing agency, these tactics felt eerily similar. Slogans and zingy "buzz words" were thrown around and I was known for a particularly clever one for a floral client. On a call, the client was explaining how emotional the decision is for their clients shopping for wedding or funeral decorations and I quickly chirped back, "Make 'em cry, make 'em buy!" The client found it entertaining and the whole team was cracking up at how aggressive it was, especially for such a delicate and sweet client.

It sounded like a tagline from a Mafia training brochure.

But it reminded me of rhetoric I heard growing up in the Catholic church when they would say things like, "Give 'till it hurts" relating to financial contributions and they weren't mincing words either. It seems obvious when these words (warnings) are in our face, but we've probably all experienced the feeling of over-extending or giving too much to something in our lives.

The "therapy side" of me sees the connection with relationships and times when I probably stayed with a partner longer than I should have when there were red flags. But, for whatever reason I stayed and probably "gave 'till it hurt." It could also relate to giving too many chances to family members who perpetually let you down in destructive ways.

On the corporate side of things, in a more professional light, we call this "burnout." It's common from the over-achievers who want to be proud of everything they do, but they're just given too many tasks to stay afloat. That kind of role doesn't always show its hand and it doesn't have a flashy slogan to warn you what you're getting yourself into. Sometimes, it's not even limited to over-achievers, but it's a workload landing on the people who remain after the rest of a healthy team was carved away for whatever corporate-jargon-explained-away reason.

I've had this happen a few times myself and have often thought back on the experiences as jobs or opportunities that "took too much from me," but I've been reflecting on that perspective lately. I wasn't forced, I wasn't in dire need of the money to the point that I couldn't go elsewhere; I was overextended because I allowed myself to be overextended.

Nowadays this requires boundary-setting. This could include good old-fashioned time management and only having a certain amount of time to dedicate to a project, or if could start even earlier in the process by not committing to things that you don't have the time for in the first place. That's where it gets complicated.

The same over-achievers who want to do their best at everything are often the people that their peers see as reliable, dependable, and competent enough to do things for them. So, when friends and family or even close contacts come asking for your help with something, it can be hard to turn down.

Over the last few years, it feels silly to be more proud of the things that I turned down than the opportunities that I said yes to. Am I excited for the things I've participated in? Absolutely! But, it feels like a larger accomplishment for me, personally, to have looked at some things that could have been cool, fun, etc. and say, "No, thank you," for whatever reason. Sometimes, it's been that I didn't have the time, I didn't think I could do the job to the level we would both want, and sometimes it was just because I didn't want to do it and that's ok, too.

I can't recall where I first heard the quote, but I've heard it many more times since that day. It's something along the lines of: "You can have everything you want, you just can't have it all at once." Time and energy are truly finite and they should be respected as such. You can be really great if a project (or relationship) has your full and refreshed attention, but when you're running on fumes and doing too much, you're not going to be very good at any of it.

This goes back to the beautiful concept that we're all chasing (even more than the "pursuit of happiness" these days, it seems): work - life balance. It's not all about bath bombs and spa days. Not over-committing is self care, too. We don't always get to choose how much responsibilities we take on (especially those who are parents or full-time caregivers), but when possible - try to respect the "no."

I hope you enjoy all of the beautiful time you get back to enjoy your life.

Until next time ~

Sarah