The Power of "Three Before Me": Finding Out the Answers Yourself Through Asking Around

You guys. Audrey, fam, we have something to talk to you about today. Happy day. Whatever day it is that you are catching us talk about this spicy topic we are bringing to the table today. We're excited to bring it to the table today because as we were talking about what we wanted to talk about, I told Jill, I was like, this is a concept that I learned in middle school. Middle school. Middle school. Middle school. Mary has been practicing this concept for years and she looked at me and said, I didn't hear about it or learn about it.

That would have been cool if I would have learned it then. Corporate America. I was an adult, so like late twenties corporate America time. And it's the concept of ask 33123, ask three before me. So what does that mean? I'm assuming I learned it in middle school because my teachers had classes to run, right? You think 20 to 25 kids per class. If every single student was asking her or him a question that they needed an answer to, she wouldn't be able to get any work done. And that's us. We own a small business.

So if we were to answer every beck and call, email, text message, phone call, we would never get any of our own work done. So why are we talking to you about this today? Today we're talking about it because we, we need more people to get on board with this role. Because we live in a generation where we go on Amazon and we buy whatever we need in that moment and we get it at our doorstep later that night or the next day. Click of a button, baby. Click of a button. And as opposed to us being problem solvers and working on our own skills, skills to find the answer, we just want to go to the source and not thinking, are we inconveniencing them or taking away their time?

Something that has really stuck with me besides the analogy. Big analogy person. Love it when it rhymes. Three before me. Very catchy, really. Middle school Mary has been practicing this concept since I heard it because it just stuck. It stuck right there. But another analogy that we like to use is, is the saying around your emergency is not somebody else's priority. And I'm not saying that to sound harsh or mean or think that your problems are any less important than my problems, that your problem in that moment might not be a priority for somebody else who's in the middle of something else.

So what are the three things that you can exercise prior to going to the source? I like to think of it as the lifelines. Who here is old enough to remember? Who wants to be a millionaire. Right. They couldn't have the answer, so they extended lifelines before actually answering the question, what are those three lifelines? There's a plethora of information in this day and age. That's what makes it a little scary, is we're living in the age of information, right? We have information at our fingertips 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

But it hasn't necessarily made us any smarter, in our opinion. It's made us more lazy. And that's the unfortunate part, because as adults, if we're not going and using our critical thinking skills or using our ability to be resilient to find an answer, guess who's watching, guess who's gleaning ways of being from us, our kids. Our kids. And the funny thing is, because we work with girls, we work with children, and parents come to us and they're like, we need to develop their, their skillset, their social skills, their emotional skills.

And it's funny because the mirror needs to be flipped. The mirror needs to be put on the parent to say, well, how am I showing up? So a rule like this is so important. And does it take extra time? Yes, but it's one of those things that helps you cross your t's and dot your I's versus guess or inconvenience someone else because it's your emergency. So let's just throw out a little example. I already said we own a small business, and if we were to answer everyone's beck and call right away, we would never get anything done.

That's the other unfortunate thing about the world we live in, is people know you have your phones on you 24/7 so there's this undue stress and pressure to answer people right away. Or you start telling yourself a story about how that person feels about your lack of response probably means you don't have a lot of boundaries around that. That's a whole nother conversation. But there's this unspoken expectation that because we're all living in this digital world, we should be able to answer people right away.

However, that's not the case because you have to be able to prioritize your life in order to get the important things that you need to get done. Done. So for us, it comes in a form of an email. We got an email this morning from a parent who we've been communicating with about a workshop that we're having with her. And we sent her all the details, the RSVP, all of it, last night in an email. She responded to our email this morning and said, could you resend that attachment because I'm not at my computer, I'm on my phone.

And we were like, gosh, it's very interesting because I'm assuming, given that we're living in such a digital age, she could probably find the attachment. But what's the easier thing to do? Rather than dig in the emails or have to download something, it's easier just to shoot off an email that says, can you do this for me? Right. She could have waited when she got home, when she was at her computer, if her email was not on her phone. So again, in order to support one another, we all have to do our part.

And I promise you it is a practice and you're going to start catching yourself. The beautiful thing is starting to develop that self awareness skill to say, oh, my gosh, I do it a lot. I actually cast my net on more people to have them basically answer all of my questions when I can give them the time for them to be prioritizing their life, their family, etcetera. So that's our challenge to you. Who are your three? What are your three resources? How are you building that resiliency muscle to find the answer to your question before asking somebody you know has the answer?

You got it. You're capable. You're capable. You're super freaking capable. And we believe in you. So if you don't believe in yourself at this point, before you call us, we're challenging you to find, dig a little deeper.