The Client Letter
August 24, 2012
Sedona, Arizona
Partly Cloudy 69 Degrees
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This skill is responsible, by far, for the majority of my income:
Get the details.
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I’ve written before about how one of my challenges is that I grew up being a “Yes” man.
Deep down, I did it to be liked. I said Yes, when I meant No. And I did it over and over again.
“Can you get this done by tomorrow?” Yes.
“Can you add this one part in to the project?” Yes.
“Could you please summarize the conversation we just had and email it to me?” Yes. (OMG, I can’t believe I ever did this.)
If you suffer from this same affliction and you want to change it, you need to develop a new habit.
Here’s something that might help:
The next time someone asks you to do something (in your business or your personal life), instead of saying yes, propose something slightly different… just because you can.
“Can you have this to me by Tuesday?”
You say, “I can have this to you by Friday afternoon at 2:00PM.”
The trick is to stop running things by your “I want to be liked” filter and permanently divert them to run through the “I’m in charge of my life” filter instead.
You’re not trying to be difficult. This is just a simple exercise you can use to prove to yourself that you really are in control of things.