Five Lies We Tell Ourselves To Stay Safe: Lie #5

This week is Lie #5.
You can find the other “lies” in this series here:
Lie #1: I don’t have time
Lie #2: I can’t afford it
Lie #3: It’s not in my budget
Lie #4: I need to think about it
Lie #5: I can do it myself
Conclusion

Let’s review what I mean by “stay safe.”

Staying safe means not taking risks. Not doing things that stretch our comfort zone. It’s not making a phone call to a potential client because it’s uncomfortable. It’s staying home from that networking group because you don’t know anyone. It’s not working with someone that could help you move forward in your business because it’s different than what you’ve done. I’m sure you can add plenty of your own examples.

Lie #5: I can do it myself

This one has a different flavor than the other lies, doesn’t it?

This one is deciding that you don’t need help with something, in whatever form that help comes in, because you can do it yourself. And the truth is, maybe you can do it yourself. You might already be doing it yourself, but do you need, or want, to be?

Sometimes it shows up as “I’ll do it myself because they’ll do it wrong.”

In my life that showed up as refolding the towels because my husband didn’t fold them the right way. This just frustrated both of us. Until I let it go and decided that it being done at all was more important than it being done my way.

In my business that looked like trying to figure out marketing and messaging by myself. After all, I know my business better than anyone, right? I don’t need someone else to tell me what to do! Only, I realized that things moved faster when I had help (and accountability).

And I hear it from people all the time. I need to do x and this person could help me, but I can figure it out by myself. They might even go out and pick up a book on the subject or listen to a free teleclass. And six months later, they have the same problems or frustrations as before.

My favorite version of this is it’s faster if I just do it myself. And while it might initially take you more time, in the long run it will save you time.

Say it’s something that you do once a week that takes you a half hour. Maybe it will take you two hours to train someone and another hour to review their progress or work later. Yes, for a week or two it’s going to take you 3 hours instead of 30 minutes.

However, over the course of a year you’ll go from spending about 26 hours working on it to spending maybe 8 (figuring you’ll spend some time every week or so looking the work over fairly quickly). That’s a lot of time over the course of a year. Imagine how much time that would save you if it was something that took you a couple hours each week, or a half hour each day!

I’m sure you have plenty of examples in your own life and business, things that you’re struggling with but will figure out yourself.

So, when you hear yourself saying I can do it myself, ask yourself how much faster it will go if you asked someone (or paid someone) to help you with that.

Do you have any examples you’d like to share? I’d love to know about them! Share in the comments below.

Image courtesy of mrsiraphol / FreeDigitalPhotos.net