The “Break it Down” Blog

About a month ago I wrote a piece about “Chronic Underachievement” and yesterday the CEO of OpenRain wrote an article about “Handling Self Doubt” that touched on 3 excellent points I skipped over completely and still struggle with today, more specifically:

1. Criticism is a good thing (it means people care)
2. Self-Doubt can cause you to freeze in place… indefinitely
3. Chasing your dreams isn’t that risky

Realizing Your Dreams

With regard to Point #3, I think the assumption when you want to “chase your dreams” is that you have to completely turn your life on it’s head, quit everything you do (job, family, kids) and move to the moon without a space-suit… or at least it feels like that.

The reality of the issue as Preston points out in his post is that when you sit down to quantify:

1. How long you will need to try and make a go of your dream
2. The amount of lost wages during that time
3. The cost of living during that time
4. The cost of startup for your idea

It doesn’t come out to an insurmountable amount that may have otherwise thought. For example, say you have an average job and need a few months to see if your idea “Catches fire” or not, how much could that possible cost? A few thousand dollars? $10k at the most? As Preston has put it to me in the past:

What, your life-dreams aren’t worth $10k to you?

Damn, I had never sat down and thought of it that way… of course they are, it’s just that I have my mortgage and Timmy has piano lessons that are expensive and Margie wants to take that trip in October and… BZZZZTTT, wrong.

Fighting Self Doubt

See, and that leads me to Point #2, self-doubt can lock you up in the same spot for years and lead to complete inactivity almost without you knowing at times. What happens is that you conciously want to complete or execute a task, say “Get in Shape” or “Start a new Business”, but the self-doubt you have is harbored down in your sub-concious, keeping your legs from going anywhere. So all your day ends up looking like is:

• I want to start my own business…
• Oh it will never work, I don’t know what it takes
• I could just check out the library and read up on it
• Yea right, and then what, blow through all your savings and be poor?
• My parents might lend me money
• Great and then you’ll be in debt your whole life, idiot
• I guess I should just hope for that promotion at work…
• Good, that sounds safe

And next thing you know, it’s been 5 years, you are fatter than ever and have nothing to show for your time either at your company (the promotion never happened, or it was a hell of a lot less than you thought) and are no closer to starting your own business. You are completely frozen in place and don’t know why… it’s this ellusive “locked up” feeling, like a engine freezing up on you with no oil… that my friend is what chronic self-doubt feels like.

What Preston proposes you do to oil the gears and unlock yourself is action… any action, just some action. Even if that means “forget about starting your business, just check a damn business book out from the library”, you turn every insurmountable task into micro-tasks, things that are easy to complete, until you turn around 5 years down the road and… holy hell… you actually ended up starting your own business without realizing it because you completed so many micro-tasks, there was just a natural progression between Point A (complete lockup) and Point B (having your own business).

I can’t reiterate this enough, so I’m going to call this out explicitly for anyone that just self-doubted themselves while reading this paragraph on self-doubt:

The only way to combat chronic self-doubt, is action, even micro-actions.

Don’t read that last sentence and think “Yea but I can’t start my own company tomorrow”, I didn’t write that, that’s your self-doubt kicking in and making this task seem impossible, even before you tried to do anything at all.

Just complete some micro-ass task related to what your eventual goal is… hell, buy a domain name, that’s like $7 at GoDaddy. Then in a month, setup a retarded website… then a month later, go to Amazon and buy the highest-rated “how to start a business” book.

See these are all completely easy-to-do micro-tasks that you cannot excuse yourself out of doing, but they are all forcing you to walk closer towards your goal. And it’s spread out over months, so in years you will most likely have your business and it will be a hell of a lot easier than you thought.

Don’t Fear Criticism

Now that we have tackled Realizing your Dreams and Fighting Self Doubt, there is 1 thing left to tackle: criticism.

As Preston correctly pointed out, most people (especially go-getters and perfectionist folks that put themselves out there) fear criticism. Every time you do something, you are effectively standing in the center of a room and handing out “Feedback Forms” to friends, family and peers and asking for their feedback. The bigger idea you have that you try and execute, the more Feedback Forms you are handing out.

Want to take a big trip? Ok maybe just feedback from Family and a few Friends. Want to start your own bank? Friends, Family, customers, investors, school children and the lady down the street at the coffee shop will all have Feedback for you on that one.

The trick is realizing that criticism is good. Randy Pausch, the famous professor that gave his “Last Lecture” before dying of cancer said something that drives this point home so clearly that I want to share it: If you aren’t getting criticism, it means no one cares.

Consider how much worse that is than getting too much criticism (e.g. a lot of people care).

Now going back to our Feedback Form analogy, imagine you declare your idea to a room of people: “Ok, I’m going to start my own bakery!” and you walk around the room handing out Feedback Forms for everyone to fill out, and as you walk by people turn away, and back to what they were doing (e.g. newspaper, cell phone, laptop, etc.) and wave you off… none of them want a form, none of them care. You have to admit, this feels a lot shitter then everyone getting into a tizzy with suggestions about what you should do (good and bad) because they are so animated about it.

This is exactly why you shouldn’t fear criticism. Criticism is bred out of people essentially giving a damn. Some will have good suggestions that you should listen to, others will have rediculous suggestions and most will likely have criticisms that they want to shower you with because they don’t want you to succeed.

You have to realize that every time you succeed, you remind the people close to you that they could have done what you just did. If they are open-minded/supportive folks, it likely makes them happy to know they could do that. If they are closed-minded, selfish and scared, it most likely drives them nuts that you are succeeding at something and they will likely feed you negative feedback every step of the way to stop you or slow you down (So they don’t have to endure the constant reminded that they suck).

Please keep your eye out for this if you decide you want to tackle something, always keep an eye out for poisonous people, the worst part of it is that they could be someone really close to your (parent, spouse, child, etc.) and it may make you sick to your stomach to think that they don’t want you to succeed. The good news is that they are likely just scared, and with a little coaxing and motivation, they may happily join you in your endevor (so don’t loose too much hope, just be aware that those people are out there, and will come out of the wood work once you start progressing).

I am currently reading a book, How to Be a Complete and Utter Failure (that is excellent so far), that had a great quote in it, it was essentially: The more criticism you receive for an idea, the more you must push forward (because the idea is likely a good one).

That is paraphrasing, and common-sense needs to be applied (e.g. don’t try and open an brothel next to a church), but you get the idea. The criticisms, assuming they are sound, should actually be an indicator of if you are headed in the right direction or not, for whatever your goal is. This is an interesting perspective, no only should you not fear criticism, you should welcome it… you need it to direct you.

So next time someone tells you your idea is stupid, before punching them in the face, step back for a second and see if you can figure out if that criticism they just levelled against you actually provides any insight into how you should adjust your plans to execute more effectively… then punch them in the face

Conclusion

So in the span of 2000 or so words we have covered:

1. Chasing your dreams isn’t that risky
2. Self-Doubt can cause you to freeze in place… indefinitely
3. Criticism is a good thing (it means people care)

and I hope it helped. If you wanted a single take-away from this entire article, as a recommendation from me (some Joe-Schmoe that struggles with this every day), it would be to focus a lot of your energy on battling self-doubt through action.

If you can successfully battle your own inactivity by way of micro-actions (or actions if you are feeling pumped up), I think you will suddenly see a burst of 50%-75% more happiness out of your life. The chronic action will naturally lead you naturally through the other two points probably without you even knowing it.

For example, let’s say you want to get in shape but always talk yourself out of the gym, here’s a list of micro-action you could take that over time will lead you to success without you even realizing it:

• Go rake the lawn, do that yard work you ignore usually (20min of work? 40mins?)
• Go for a bike ride, but not for 10 miles, just bike around the neighborhood (5mins?)
• Walk down to that coffee shop down the street on a particularly nice day (10mins?)
• Take your dog for a walk around the neighborhood or down the street to that dog park you always drive by.
• Go wash your car outside by hand, and wax it
• Find a local community group that does the same favorite sport you had from when you were younger (NOTE: I actually did this a few years ago with Tennis, took me 10 years of inactivity and self-doubt to finally do it, but I did, and I love it — NOTE: I’m not freaking kidding, it took me 10 years to get up the gusto to find a local group to join)
• Go to the gym, BUT just do 10mins of cardio and leave (prove to yourself that it’s easy)

NOTE: The trick to making these all work is knowing that just because you do that 1 thing, you aren’t comitting to doing that same thing every day. Don’t self-doubt yourself into thinking: Oh, if I go on this bike ride, that means EVERY DAY at 5pm I have to do a 5mile bike ride. Who the hell said that? No one, and it’s just your sub-concious trying to head-fake you out of the game… don’t listen to it, go for the bike ride and just ignore it.

I think most of all, you will be amazed how short the distance between “Failure” and “Success” is once you start trying. Once you find your pace and motivation, you will likely have the thought of “Well shit, this was a lot easier than I thought” atleast once.

Life is easy to enjoy, so enjoy it!

(Click here to start enjoying life if you need help)