Stretched Too Thin? Do This Before You Burnout… Or Worse

Hey, it’s Marie Forleo and welcome to another episode of The Marie Forleo Podcast AND MarieTV — the place to be to create a business and life you LOVE.

Here we are in a BRAND NEW FRIGGIN’ YEAR, which is such an exciting time, am I right? It’s this time filled with a lot of energy and anticipation and that FEELING of a fresh start, which I love. And that means, especially for people like ambitious, creative people — we’ve got a WHOLE big laundry list of goals and projects and dreams that we want to make happen! 

If you’re anything like me — all that ambition, all that drive, all that creativity means that you MIGHT also have a habit, or just a little pattern of biting off more than you can chew. Of getting yourself into a place where, all of sudden you’re spread too thin, and things start to feel very overwhelming and you start to have TOO many different things pulling on your attention. Anyone? Anyone?

YES, RIGHT?!?! And so the danger is that when you’re pulled in too many different directions and you don’t have total clarity on exactly what you should be focusing on and what you should ignore, sadly all those big goals and dreams, they never actually materialize. And all your left with is exhaustion and burnout, and we do NOT want that to happen 

So here’s the deal — if YOU want to virtually guarantee that you’re going to achieve your most important goals this year — without stress, or overwhelm, or burnout, you HAVE to listen to the rest of this episode. 

I’m going to give you access to one of my secret power tools, it’s something that helps me — every single year — know exactly what to focus on and what to ignore. Because look, I have that tendency to take on too much too! 

First, I’m going to tell you the story of how I discovered this secret power tool when I was in a really low place and I was doubting everything, how it helped me literally 10X my business and radically reduce the amount of stress and overwhelm I was feeling. AND then, at the end of the episode, I’m going to tell you where you can get this free little assessment tool — it’s amazing — and learn for yourself how to better focus your time and your energy to achieve what’s most important for YOU this year.

So I told this story at a speaking event I did recently, so I’m going to show you that clip now. THEN I’ll be back again to tell you exactly how you can get that assessment tool for FREE. Let’s do this.

One of the questions I get asked most in my career is, “Marie, how do you get it all done? I mean, you’ve been doing this for over 20 years. You seem pretty normal and happy. Well maybe not that normal, but kinda happy. You’re very consistent. WHAT IS YOUR SECRET TO GETTING IT ALL DONE?” 

And I say, “You want to know my secret? Here’s my secret to getting it all done… I don’t.” I learned a long time ago that TRYING to do it all was not setting me up to fail, but it was severely limiting the impact and income I was capable of making. Here’s how I discovered this.

Back in 2011, this beautiful little coaching business that I’d wanted to succeed so badly, that I had worked so hard for for over a decade, was finally starting to thrive beyond anything that I could’ve imagined. 

I had this beautiful pool of one-on-one clients, we had this high-end, adventure mastermind program, so much fun. I was creating and publishing brand new video content every week for my new show at the time, MarieTV, I was running an annual business conference in NYC, and  creating and launching and running multiple online group programs. So it was a super wild and busy time.

But here was the frustrating part: I knew in my bones that I had so much more untapped potential that wasn’t being realized. My drive, my creativity was off the charts! I had this vision to make a much bigger impact in the world, but I felt like the path I was on wasn’t going to get me there. Can anyone relate? 

My bandwidth was at full capacity. There were literally no more hours in the day. And I could feel that being stretched to the max, not the Ed Mylett Max Out, like stretched to the max, it was starting to kill the joy I had for my work.

And then here was the trickiest part. Everything I was doing in my business, from a financial perspective, was actually working. So, for context, I had started my business deep in debt. And for years, just about ten of them, I was barely scraping by. So now here I was, finally making money, finally making a difference, and I had all these people depending on me. 

I remember lying in bed at night. So stressed out. I felt like such a loser. Marie, who are you kidding? What if you're not meant to be an entrepreneur at all? I mean, maybe you're a pretty okay life coach, but as a CEO, damn girl, you suck. And after quite a bit of time feeling very inadequate, feeling like a fraud, beating myself up. I finally got my head outta my butt and I said to my team, I was like, okay, look, my mission is to make a positive difference on as many people's lives as I possibly can while I'm still on planet earth. And I also want this business to be joyful and profitable and scalable, but right now I am maxed out.

I have more ideas than I have time to execute on them. And I, I just don't know what to do. So we sat down and we mapped out every single one of the core activities that I was doing to run the business. And one by one, we analyzed and audited everything. So first we wrote down how much time each activity was taking me every day, every week, every month, and every year. Then we looked at well, what were the costs associated with each of those activities? And then how much money was really coming in. Right? So we had a very clear idea in terms of profit margin, but we didn't stop there. We took one more step and I would beg to say one more Time Genius step. So in addition to the hard data about time and money, we also evaluated every single activity in terms of joy and energy.

In other words, what was the mental, emotional, psychological cost of every one of those activities, which ones were bringing me joy and which ones were making me feel dread. Then we also looked at every single thing in terms of scale and impact. So which revenue sources had the potential to just impact so many lives, which were scalable and which were not. Once we had all that information down on paper, a few things became crystal clear. First up, there were two revenue sources that were profitable, successful, popular, and guess what? They had to go. They were huge drains in terms of my energy. And they were very heavy lifts on my team. In addition to that, there was a cap on them in terms of scale and impact. We also saw two other huge opportunity zones, tremendous potential for joy and for impact and for profit, if we had the time and the bandwidth to invest in them. 

So bottom line I needed to put into practice three simple words that would go on to change the entire trajectory of my career, my business, and my life. I still use these three words to this day. Are you ready for 'em? I want you to write them down, Simplify to Amplify. One more time, Simplify to Amplify. What does that mean? Simplify to Amplify means that you deliberately focus on fewer things but you execute them on a way higher level. You see in a culture that's constantly pushing us, pressuring us to do more, to be more, to have more, to make things more complex. I chose to flip that script. I was like, uh-uh, I'm not going for the crazy, I'm gonna do less and I'm gonna do it better than anyone in the world.

And that's what I did. I proactively chose to walk away from over a million dollars in annual revenue. Now let's be real, as an entrepreneur was that scary? Oh my God. I was terrified at that particular stage in my business, a million dollars coming from the background that I come from, that was more money than I'd ever thought I'd see in my whole damn life. So no, that decision was not easy and it was not comfortable. And my peers at that time thought I was nuts. I remember one saying to me like, “Marie, what are you doing? This is crazy. These two offerings, like people are loving them. They're bringing in so much money. You're just getting traction. Why are you doing this?”

My heart and my intuition, my inner wisdom knew what was up. It knew that this Simplify to Amplify path was the way for me to get to that joyful and impactful and profitable life I desired. Now, like me, maybe there's some things in your life right now that you're ready to sunset. Maybe there's some things for you that you might have outgrown. 

Now look, I get it. It's scary. And it's even scarier. If the things you're considering walk away from are actually working. When there's nothing wrong. When they're making you money. When they're good enough. But when your heart, when your soul is telling you that you are meant for more, when you know there's another possibility for you if you only make the space, you have to have the courage to step back to reassess and recreate your own success on a much higher level. 

So fast forward in my story, I did it. I walked away from all those revenue streams and you wanna know what happened, my joy, my company's impact, and our profits freaking exploded. I'm serious. It was like 10X growth, like a rocket ship, all from sitting down and from calculating the cost of time stress in my life. From auditing and analyzing every single thing I was doing with my time. It gave me the clarity to wake up every single day, to know exactly what to focus on and exactly what to ignore. 

You know, when I went through this process for myself, I created a framework, really an assessment to help me get everything outta my head, everything out of my heart to organize it and get clear, to really understand what time stress was costing me.

I have to tell you, and I cannot underscore this enough, the clarity that I got from that exercise has helped me create results that are so far beyond anything I could imagine. The point you need to hear this: is in order to become the Time Genius that you are meant to be, you have to prioritize what matters most at this stage and season of your life. And in order to prioritize what matters most, you need to decide what matters most. 

Now, for me at that particular point in my life, joy, impact, and profit. For you right now, who knows, it might be something different. Maybe it's your health. Maybe it's your marriage. Maybe it's your mission. For others of you, it might be starting an entirely new business or changing careers, or actually spending more time with the people that you love while you still have that one more chance. I don't know what it is for you, but I do know this. You have got to have the courage to ask yourself those questions and you have to find the courage to listen to the answer that arises, not the answer from your heart, not the answer from social media, not the answer from society. The answer from your soul.

Because here's something that I know about ambitious, driven people like us. We can continue to push and push and push. We can continue to run the same pattern over and over and over again. And we can even make it look sexy. We can make it look glamorous to the outside world, but inside we know the truth. We know that we don't want that old version of success anymore. And so many of you are here today because there's something that you don't want anymore. There's something that you wanna change. And look, so many aspects of your business and your life, I'm sure are amazing. That's true. And there's still something that you wanna change. And I can tell you this. Thousands of people are escaping time stress and they're finding profound transformation from following this simple Time Genius formula. They are healing themselves from chronic burnout. They are doubling and tripling their creative output in a fraction of the time. And they are finally experiencing that joy and that fulfillment and that freedom that they gotten to the game for in the first place.

This could be the year that you rediscover who you really are, outside that nonstop pressure and that exhaustion and that overwhelm that's been holding you back. This could be the year that you re-choose yourself and you redefined your own success instead of obeying the expectations and the rules of other people. This could be the year that the world gets to see you finally, in all of your glory, that playful, vibrant, multipassionate, loving, creative soul that you were born to be. I am so honored to be in this space with you and to be a loving reminder on behalf of every woman, and man, and child, who you are gonna inspire and touch based on what you do with the messages that you've heard today. For them I say, thank you And let's go make this the year that you become a Time Genius. Thank you so much.

Pretty cool, right? So now you know the power of Simplify to Amplify. And as I mentioned in my talk — I turned that framework into this really cool, free assessment that’s gonna help you start to understand what your time is worth to you. It’s gonna help you clarify what you should focus on this year and what you should ignore. 

You can go take the free assessment at TimeStressQuiz.com, that’s TimeStressQuiz.com

I want you to go do the assessment now and I promise you, it only takes a few minutes and it will give you SO much insight on how to make the best use of your precious time and energy this year. 

And look, if you want to go even deeper with me and learn how to master your time, and  your attention, and your energy, I hope you’re gonna join us for our Time Genius training experience. You can learn more about it at JoinTimeGenius.com  –  I’m going to be coaching people through that program at the end of this month. 

No matter what, I am so excited for all the incredible goals and projects and dreams that you are going to bring to life this year. This is going to be a good one. I can feel it in my heart, it’s gonna be amazing for all of us. And I’m gonna be here supporting you, and loving on you, and cheering you on, and celebrating you every step of the way.

And by the way, I actually learned that 70% of you here on YouTube aren’t even subscribed to the channel yet. LIKE WHAT!?!? That’s crazy pants! I need you to hit that subscribe button right now. We’ve got so many incredible things to share with you this year and I don’t want you to miss out on a thing. 

Until next time, stay on your game and keep going for your big dreams. Because the world really does need that special gift that only you have. Thank you so much for tuning in, and I’ll catch you next time.

The stats around making lasting change from New Year’s resolutions are pretty dismal. In fact, one study by the Journal of Clinical Psychology showed that about 54% of folk who make a  resolution fail to keep it up past six months. And then guess what? Most people make the same damn resolutions 10 times without success.