self criticism – Alphadog Success

Master Your Inner Critic to Be Successful

Our inner critic says, we get told the world is the way is and you just have to live your life inside that world as best you can. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family, have fun, save a little money. Don’t step on toes, don’t be too cocky. That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call ‘life’ was made up by people that were relatively no smarter than you. So, if you want to change something in your world… you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use too. You are more useful than you know. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again. This is the advice I learned from Steve Jobs. You know that billionaire guy with the Apple fetish? He rocked. And more than that, he knew he did. That was the biggest secret to his success on and offline – like you, he initially thought ‘I don’t want a job. I want to be an entrepreneur’. Most of us end there and then let self-doubt cloud any potential of getting any further. We make a few bucks, we live pretty comfortable and we dream realistically. We see the obstacles. But obstacles don’t stop us from going further, as we may think – it is actually how resourceful we are in dealing with them. We can’t let a few trials dictate to us where our ceiling of success is. And while being safe instead of bold is a good strategy if you like this life… there is no harm in a little self-love. It is this that creates the boldness, and ultimately the desired results. If you wonder what being bold has to do with being successful or you think that talking about self-love is a little too ‘new-agey’… then let’s get scientific. 55% of all of our communication (that is how we present ourselves to the world) is not what we say or the words we decide to use. It is our body language. It is what we do with our face and our tone. The words you say are a side note. And so, it is essential to believe in yourself each day before you ever set foot online thinking you’re going to make a million because – heck – if you don’t believe it and you are not congruent, not one customer is going to believe that you’re the one to solve all their problems either. So next time your inner critic says ‘I don’t want to sell myself’ or ‘I’m not sure people will like my product’ or ‘Am I charging/asking too much?’, make sure that the answer to that is in line with how much you value yourself. Be the value and people will pick up on it. Tell yourself you have lots to offer and that you can do it. And why not… many people talk to themselves negatively all day long and have nothing to show for it. So why not try looking at things differently? I’ll say it one last time… you want to succeed. Do it from the inside out – believe you can first. Don’t let your inner critic run the show. Believe you are worth that money. It is from a place of fear and worry that most people never pick up that phone and call when they should, most people never ask for what they want (at the price they want) when they know they should. That’s what separates the people that do things from the people who just dream about them. It’s up to you to take action. You must be willing to fail. You’ve got to be willing to crash and burn. And when it is all done and it’s time to get up, it’s not your legs that will lift you… it’ll be your self-belief, not your inner critic. Take a deep breath and say it out loud – “I am worth it!” Now get to work.

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Finding Confidence To Embrace Life’s Big Decisions & Overcome Fear of…

Confidence comes from a latin word affīdāre which means “to trust oneself”; therefore, finding confidence is just having more trust in one’s self and fear of failure. Confidence is a state of being clear headed either that a hypothesis is correct or that a chosen course of action is the best or most effective. I talk to a lot of sales professionals and entrepreneurs, people starting their own businesses, and they want to learn: “How can I develop more confidence or even just get myself a bit more confident so that I can be more successful in what I do?” In order to make this happen, we have to realize where confidence comes from and what finding confidence means. Finding confidence is basically your ability to take action and feel good about yourself and the results of the action. Feeling like whatever it is you’re about to jump into, you can do a good job and you can come out of it looking and feeling good. Now, this doesn’t happen by accident. When you look at the way confidence shows up in our lives, it appears as a result of doing things over and over again and developing a proficiency from it. Confidence, in and of itself, is not something that you’re born with or not born with. It’s something that’s developed over time through practice and repetition. When you first learned to walk, at 12 or 13-months old or whatever it may be for you; you weren’t very confident at walking. In fact, you couldn’t walk at all. But you were determined to try, and determined to succeed. You stood on the side of the sofa and you pushed yourself off and you would fall. You would try it again and you would maybe balance for a bit and then fall. But you would do it over and over again. Your level of confidence in the beginning was tiny. In fact, there probably was no confidence. But you were so determined to do it, that you kept going regardless of the outcome. Eventually you took a step, you followed that with another step, and soon enough you were walking and now you’re an adult and you can walk from one room to another, you can walk for miles as an exercise or whatever, and not even think about the act of walking. It’s just something that comes naturally to you now. If someone were to ask you your level of confidence on a scale of 0 to 10, how confident you are that you could walk across the room, you’d probably say 11. It isn’t even something that you ever think to question…You just do it. The same thing goes for finding confidence in all areas of life – including your professional life. Let’s say your success right now requires your ability to sell. Doesn’t matter what it is. To sell a product, to sell an idea, to sell a service, sell a training program. I don’t know what it is for you. You might not be confident in your ability to communicate value in a way that exceeds the expense and closes a deal. So the important question becomes, how are you going to find that confidence? You weren’t born with it. Thinking about yourself going into a situation where you might have to sell somebody, makes you nervous or self-conscious. How do you get to a point where you’re confident in doing it no matter what you are selling? First, it’s natural to feel fear whenever you are stepping out of your comfort zone…it’s a biological response we have maintained from our “caveman brains”. Luckily there are many other, more evolved portions of our brain we can counter it with. So, the next time you’re feeling fearful, just try to put it into perspective. Recognize that fear is only a feeling, a chemical response to a thought. Fear can feel very, very real. But it’s only an emotion that survives and thrives when we feed it with our attention. The first step in mastering your fear of taking massive action is to remember to tell yourself that fear isn’t real – that it’s only a feeling that can’t hurt actually you. Remember, everyone experiences fear Everyone experiences fear before they try something new. Think Tony Robbins hasn’t experienced fear of failure? Sure he has, and I’m sure he would tell you that himself. Everyone has experienced fear of failure, the fear of looking like a fool, the fear of losing friends, the fear of being judged, a fear of being called an imposter, the fear of ending up worse than when you started, whatever it may be. In fact, statistics show that a whopping 85% of the population has some form of self-doubt. When a moment of panic comes over you, image your role model and remember that they too have experienced fear. But they moved through it anyway. Sometimes you’ll just have to do it afraid. Do it anyway. Take the first small step We’ve all heard Newton’s 1st Law of Motion: A body at rest tends to stay at rest, while a body in motion tends to stay in motion. Notice that feeling of fear, and then take that first small step in spite of it. Fear is a natural and required part of the process. Accept your ability to work through fear and do it anyway. You’ll learn from it and you’ll make mistakes and you’ll fall on your face, just like you fell when you were first learning how to walk. But you do this once and you’ll get a little bit of feedback, and you’ll get a little bit of insight. Maybe you can even find a manager or mentor to review your work and see a couple of things that you could improve on in the future. This is incredibly valuable feedback. Go to the next project, make the corrections, make a little bit of an improvement, and you will increase your confidence. Maybe you don’t close the sale, but you go to

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An Entirely New Way to Look at Criticism

Almost any marketing coach can tell you stories of students who came to them for help in launching their product. The student has the product ready to go. Maybe it needs a few tweaks, but they are small things that could be done in a few days or maybe even in a few hours. We’re talking about products that in many cases are better quality than 90% of products out there. But they won’t launch the product. They keep telling themselves their product/service isn’t ready, that it needs improving, the time isn’t right, etc… They’re deceiving themselves. The real reason they’re not launching? FEAR. Stark terror that someone, somewhere, will dislike them or say something BAD about their product. Or worse yet – people will hate their product AND the product won’t sell. But here’s the fact to focus on instead: A product that is never launched makes no money. Period. Yes, someone might not like your product. So what? In fact, there could be HUNDREDS of people who don’t like your product. So what? If the product is selling, does it matter that some people don’t like it? Look at radio talk show hosts and commentators. They have thousands or in some cases hundreds of thousands of people who don’t like them. Yet they also have LOTS and LOTS of loyal followers willing to pay to hear them or jump on their recommended products. So how do you get over the fear of launching? Here’s one way: Agree with yourself that your product isn’t finished. That’s right – it isn’t done yet. But you’re going to launch ANYWAY. As you improve your product, you will send your customers updated versions. What’s that? You forgot to add a section about managing gophers to your gardening product? Add the section and send it out to buyers. Then add it to the product itself so all new buyers get it automatically. And then add a couple of bullets to your sales letter that let prospects know you cover gophers, too. Easy, right? In fact, this gives you an entirely new way to look at criticism. Instead of cringing and wishing you had done the product differently, you can objectively look at the criticism and decide if you want to make a change based on that feedback or not. This is a much more empowering point of view than hiding in the corner, fearful of any negative comment that might come your way. Now then, let’s look at a worst case scenario: You launch your product and the very first feedback you get is, “This product sucks, I want a refund!” If this happens, there is one of two things going on, and the next few days will tell you which one it is. If more people write back with similar comments, then maybe you do have a poor product. In that case, pull it, fix it and relaunch it. Or pull it and create something else. But if sales are good and refunds are low, then what you encountered on that first feedback was likely a chronic ‘refunder’ – one of those people who buy products with the intention of finding a miracle/instant fix…who immediately quit and ask for a refund. Don’t waste your time trying to help those people. Just know that the overwhelming majority of buyers don’t do this. Most buyers are good, honest, decent people. The few who do chronically refund are just a minor annoyance that ALL product sellers have to put up with, including the big names in your niche and elsewhere. So don’t sweat it! Give them their refund and if you have the capability, block them from buying from you again, just to avoid aggravation down the line when you launch your next product. Fear of launching your product is a fear of leaving your comfort zone. Comfort zones are… well… comfy. Cozy. Warm. Secure. Safe. But sometimes you have to take a deep breath, hit the button and launch your new product to the world. Don’t worry – it gets less scary each time you do it. And you’re never alone. Even product creators who have made millions still get plenty nervous when it’s time to launch their new creation. It’s a natural reaction. The point is, you can’t let a case of nerves, no matter how bad they are, get in the way of moving forward and launching your product. Find out what you need to use to get yourself to launch. Is it a reward? Blackmail? A psychological trick? A reminder of WHY you are doing this? I know one marketer who imagines hurling himself into battle each time he launches. Another one keeps photos of his family at his desk to remind him of why he needs to overcome his fear. And a third bribes herself with a 4 day vacation for each product she launches. Whatever it takes to get you to launch – just do it. Of course, it always helps to have a coach or mentor on your side – so if you don’t have one of those yet – get one! ~Wishing you success!Drew

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