Susan is an amazing designer. She can walk into a room, move a few pieces of furniture, grab a picture from another room, add a plant and a lamp and make what was a basic room look like royalty lives there. Ask Susan to cook dinner and she pulls out the menu from the quaint restaurant down the street and orders a yummy family style meal.
Jodi can pull together a fabulous event. Planned from beginning to end. Everyone who attends raves about what a glorious time they had. Jodi pays for a technological assistant to help her remember when to pick up her kids from school or when her doctor's appointment starts.
Rachel loves going on field trips with her kids and volunteering in the classroom or with their sports teams. When someone asked her to serve on the board for one of their activities, Rachel declined. She knew she was good with the kids, but not good with administrative details, planning or dealing with conflict.
Gayle delivers amazing speeches and runs her team meetings smoothly with everyone participating and leaving feeling like they accomplished something. When asked to write for a local magazine, Gayle turned down the offer and suggested someone on her team would be a better person to ask.
Each of these women are amazing at what they do. And each of these women know how their strengths and weaknesses. Because of that, they know when to say yes and when to say no. That doesn't mean they don't stretch and challenge themselves, but they know their limits and they allow others to shine in places where they know they won't.
I have a tendency to want to be good at everything. But I'm not. I'm good at connecting people to resources. I'm good at seeing the big picture and breaking it down into smaller tasks. I'm also really good at over-committing, but I stay pretty scheduled so that when someone asks me to do something, I know what is coming up and if I have the time to commit or not.
Take some time to write down some of your strengths and weaknesses. If you're not sure of what those are, ask some of the people around you. Your spouse, your kids, your sister, even your parents. Consciously or unconsciously, we all have a standard that we believe we must meet – a person we believe we must be. But actually discovering who we are – our strengths and our weaknesses – allows us to be truly honest with ourselves and with others.