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You may be thinking “this guy’s gonna tell me that successful people don’t take anything personally.”  You’re right!  But there’s more to it than that; quite a bit more in fact.  One thing is certain:  when you start applying focused and determined effort on a regular basis as we discussed in the last few posts, you’re going to get some criticism in some form or another.  Now this can come in many forms, naturally.  There’s the obvious form, which is direct insults hurled at you or your brand, or people telling you how you should run your life/business differently.  But then there’s a less obvious form, and it usually comes disguised as good intentions.  Ever hear “you work so hard!  You really should take a break every now and then.  It’s good for you!” or “Running a business is really stressful!”?  While the person using this form of criticism (telling you how to do things differently) is likely trying to help you, they are not necessarily thinking about helping you reach your goals. If you need to rest, your body will force it upon you.  This type of criticism is what some would call “nay-saying”.  Nay-saying is basically any verbiage that tries to distract you from what you are trying to achieve, and as mentioned before, it is masked by kindness most often.

We all experience criticism one way or another on a regular basis.  It comes as a part of being human and a unique human at that.  But how you handle any form of criticism can easily be a determining factor on how much success you achieve.

So how do Average Joe and Mundane Jane deal with criticism and nay-saying?  Well for one, they often will listen intently to what the caring nay-sayers are preaching at them.  If someone tells them they are working too hard, they tend to agree.  They will heed all the warnings they hear and start to take it easy when they should be working much harder.  For the average person who listens to this veiled criticism, it becomes increasingly difficult to make any real progress or lasting change.  Nearly everyone has a desire to feel wanted, appreciated, and accepted by their peers and family, but by succumbing to that desire too often the average Joe/Jane severely limits their own growth potential.

This isn’t even taking into account actual, harsher forms of criticism.  When the average person hears harsh criticism, they tend to take it personally and feel it deep within their bones to some extent.  Then the little voice inside their head repeats this criticism over and over until it sticks.  Then any time they set out to accomplish something the internal critic is at the ready with “you shouldn’t do that!  Someone might hate you for it!”  What’s worse than listening to other people’s criticisms but having to listen to your mind’s criticisms, especially when your mind controls your creative faculties, your drive, and determination?  The average Joe/Jane loves their internal critic, whether or not they are willing to admit it.

The success-minded, on the other hand,  have an entirely different perspective when it comes to criticism.  To put succinctly, in the words of Robert Downey Jr, “Smile, nod, agree, and do whatever the f*** you were going to do anyway.”  All successful people know beyond any shadow of doubt that in order to go above normality they will hear from all the critics who are trying to hold them down and keep them average.   Same goes for nay-sayers.  Successful people do not listen to this form of criticism whatsoever!  They just keep the path that they know and believe in.

There is a form of criticism that successful people do listen to, but such criticism only applies to that which they produce as a product or service.  Anyone who runs a business knows that customer satisfaction is second only to customer acquisition, and that the only way to ensure that a customer is satisfied is by listening to their criticism/complaints.  However when listening to a customer’s criticism they are not likely to take any of it personally even if they created the product with their own two hands.  Successful people listen to this form of criticism and use it as a means of understanding their market and their customers better.  While at first it may seem that someone’s complaints about a product or service is a negative thing that might result in the loss of business, the success-minded know that they can leverage that critique and use it to secure and satisfy more customers later by remedying the problem.

Making the Shift

You are always going to hear criticism of all kinds from all kinds of people.  You have to always physically hear it.  It is entirely up to you, the listener, how to respond to it and determine its legitimacy.  No matter how you decide to respond to someone’s criticism, you must do so effectively and swiftly.  Failure to do so will either slow you down or cause you to lose business.  So how can one learn to do that?

The “Three Boxes” Method

In your mind create three boxes labeled “Constructive Advice”, “Garbage Advice/Whining”, and “Customer Complaints.”  We all know criticism when we hear it, so the idea is to take that criticism and throw it into one of these boxes for storage so we don’t needlessly let the criticism run around our minds all day.

Here’s what goes in each box.

“Constructive Advice” Box:

Literally any suggestion, from people who know what they are talking about, on how you can improve what it is you are doing and therefore reach your targets faster.  This does not include advice from people who have not been where you want to go in life.  If your mother/father has never made a million dollars in their life would you honestly listen to their advice on how to become a millionaire?  Probably not.  Yes, I know they are your parents and you should respect them and what they have to say, but they can’t help you reach that goal as much as a billionaire could.  However, as a caveat, there are times where people without experience share great ideas with you.  If you think that what you are hearing is good and can help you reach your goals then store that input in the “Constructive Advice” box.

You will know constructive advice when you hear it.  If you can immediately take that advice you heard and connect it with how it helps you reach your goals, it goes in the “Constructive Advice” box.  The more advice you hear of this type the better off you will be.  As such you should make a point to surround yourself with like-minded people, or those who have done what you are attempting.  They can and they will help you.  Heck, just being around them for long enough will change the way you think!  “Location, location, location” applies not just to the locale of your business venue, but also to where you find yourself as well.  Bad location = bad results.  Good location = good results.

“Garbage Advice/Whining” Box

This box should be shaped like a garbage can.  Anything that goes into this box is literally trash and should not take up any mental real estate.  The moment you hear it, just let it pass right through from one ear to the other.  The types of things you put in this box will include people telling you to slow down, take it easy, or take a day off when you know that you don’t need to do so.  It will also include, as I mentioned before, advice you get from people who don’t have the experience to back it up.

Whining that you get from peers, coworkers, or employees can also go in this box for the most part.  If someone says “you’re too assertive!” that is whining.  If someone says “you expect too much from your team” when you are working harder and longer than your team is, that is whining.  Basically, what goes into this box is criticism that cannot help you reach your goals faster or things that will ultimately slow you down.

“Customer Complaints” Box

Everyone who is employed on planet earth has customers.  I’m not necessarily talking about the customers you buy your business’s products or services (while those certainly apply as well).  Your customers are anyone who consume or compensate you in some way for your services or products.  These include your kids, your spouse, and your boss.  Your family always deserves a certain amount of your time, attention, and affection, so if you hear criticism on these fronts you should store it in the “Customer Complaints” box.  If your boss ever critiques your work or what you produce you should always take such under advisement.  Never, ever ignore your customers.  If you can keep them happy then they will make you happy.

All items filed in this box need to be dealt with in some fashion.  While you may not need to deal with any customer issues the moment you receive them, all customer complaints should be handled swiftly and effectively.  You must find a way to ensure that they are satisfied with the level of quality you produce, while at the same time not forgoing your own goals.  There is always a solution to these dilemmas, but it is entirely up to you to find it.

Using the System in General

In order to use this three-box filing system for the criticism you receive in your life, you must make a concerted effort to place each critique in its box quickly.  If it goes un-stored, it will float around your mind like a bunch of old papers floating around your work desk.  The first and the last box are “deal with later” boxes.  Those items should never be neglected and should always be acted on as swiftly as humanly possible.  The second box on the other hand should always remain empty.  The moment you hear a critique that gets filed in the “Garbage Advice/Whining” box try visualizing that comment burning away into nothing.  Those critiques have no business cluttering your mind whatsoever.

With practice you will be able to handle criticism as well as the most successful people in our culture.  While they tend to do this filing automatically, you will be doing the same in the not too distant future.

Tyler Bennett is a writer, entrepreneur, and graduate student in mathematics who has a passion for helping students get the most out of their education and their lives as a whole. He has authored several books including The Art of Habit Building and The College Handbook They Never Gave You under the pen name Dan Stevens, and is the primary writer for the website TheCollegeSuccessGuide.net . Tyler is married and has four cats.

In the last post, we discussed the importance of going at a task with every fiber of your being.  Sure, we know challenges are healthy and beneficial and that we should tackle them head on, thus applying effort, but what is our actual relationship with applying that effort?  How do we view it?  And perhaps more importantly, how should we view it?

When most people set out to complete a task they often only view it as exactly that: a task.  Effort is applied to get something done, or rather, get something off their plate so they don’t have to think or worry about it anymore.  In other words, the task is the end itself.  Often when we create to-do lists for ourselves the items on said lists typically aren’t earth -shattering in what they accomplish.  So even when we get many of those to-do’s checked off, we feel as though we still aren’t getting anywhere.  Eventually we condition ourselves to believe that effort isn’t going to get us very far.  We become reserved when it comes to exerting effort, selecting the tasks that give us the biggest dopamine rush (i.e. checking emails) instead of working on the things that actually matter.  Effort for the most part seems fruitless.  This is especially true if we aren’t certain that our effort is going to have a guaranteed payoff (this is where faith comes in).

The success-minded, however have an entirely different relationship when it comes to effort.  Even if the outcome is uncertain with no guaranteed payoff, the top performers see effort as a means of getting closer to their desired target.  They truly believe that, with enough effort in the right places, they can build up to their dreams.  Effort is always a means to an end, and that end is never left out of sight.  When a success-minded person builds a to-do list, they aren’t thinking of boxes that they need to check off before heading to sleep that night.  They are determining how to spend the 110% effort they plan to give wisely on tasks that get them closer to their desired outcome.  The focus is never the task.  The focus is the goal the task helps them to reach.  With a goal always on the forefront of their mind, they never are sparing with their effort.  Effort on meaningful, goal reaching tasks is always effort well spent.  The mindset, put succinctly, is “I am willing to put my 110% into X because it helps me get to Y.”

Making the Shift

This is perhaps the easiest of the mindset changes of the five to make.  All it takes is a bit of thought redirection and some extra scribbling.

Every day in the morning and at night write down your big goals, and I mean the REALLY big goals.  Yes, this may feel like a pain at first, but your goals and dreams are worth it.  Maybe you want to get your business to $100 million this year, or perhaps you want to have the musculature of Ahhnold.  Those are the big goals you should be considering when writing your list; the ones that inspire you the most.  Writing smaller goals down that lead to the big ones can also be helpful.  These are the things that all of your daily actions must build toward.  Any other tasks are likely extraneous.

In addition to your list of big goals, either before you hit the sack at night or right when you wake up (I prefer the former), write down your to-do list for the following day.  Do this even if you already have it all written down in a planner or elsewhere.  Then beside each of your tasks, write down which of your big goals each task helps you reach.  If you can’t match a task up with a big goal, then it’s very likely that the task is extraneous, doesn’t need to be done at all, or can be delegated.

When you set out to complete each item on your to-do list, be sure to think about the payoff (i.e. your big goal) that the task will help you build up toward.  Use the Task-Payoff list whenever possible.  I assure you that doing so will never leave you feeling like your efforts are fruitless again.  Every item you complete from now on will always bring you that much closer to your ultimate goals.

Eventually, through continuous use of the Task-Payoff list, you will begin to only write down the tasks that advance you toward your goals most quickly and ignore the less meaningful and unnecessary ones altogether.  This is what upper management means when they talk about maintaining focus on the “higher level” stuff.  They take the big, meaningful actions and delegate the smaller ones.  Your goal for this Shift should be getting to a point where all you really concern yourself with is the “high level” stuff.  If taking massive action with your goals in mind is your primary focus, 110% effort will feel more than worth your trouble.

Tyler Bennett is a writer, entrepreneur, and graduate student in mathematics who has a passion for helping students get the most out of their education and their lives as a whole. He has authored several books including The Art of Habit Building and The College Handbook They Never Gave You under the pen name Dan Stevens, and is the primary writer for the website TheCollegeSuccessGuide.net . Tyler is married and has four cats.

Not only is it important that you embrace challenge and try to get everything you can out of it, but it is perhaps of equal importance that all challenges are met with unrelenting force until they are overcome.

For 99% of people on planet earth, the word “tenacity” means “I’ll try for a bit, but I’m not guaranteeing anything.”  They will see an obstacle in their path and will either a) avoid it altogether or b) try to surmount it with lackluster effort for a dismal amount of time.  Somewhere between childhood and adulthood people learn that it is okay, or even wise, to give up if faced with too big of a challenge or if they aren’t making progress fast enough.  What happened to the kid who would not stop until they finally rode that bicycle despite falling time and time again?  For most people on this planet, true tenacity – that is, fighting until you either make it or drop dead — is only seen when a car needs to be lifted off of a loved one.  Otherwise, giving up is always an option.  How many successful people in the world do you know whose definition of tenacity is “I’ll give it a shot”?

Let’s take a look at Steve Jobs for a minute.  His goal in life was to “make a ding in the universe”, as he put it.  Despite being one of the founding members of Apple, he was at one point fired and essentially banished from the company for several years.  During those years he started a company called NeXT and he was bound and determined to make this new company as prolific as Apple.  Eventually Apple grew desperate, rehired him as CEO, and also bought out NeXT.  Another several years later Apple became again one of the dominating forces in the tech industry.

The moral is thus:  Steve Jobs refused to lose.  Even when forced to start from scratch he would not give up on his life goal of dinging the universe.  He believed in it and he believed he was the one who could pull it off!  Did he know for a fact that he would eventually make Apple one of the most profitable tech companies on earth?  Not at all, but he believed he could.  He acted with years of persistence on nothing but faith.  No guarantee of anything, just a belief that he could do it.  Simply put, he had a vision and would not stop working until that which was in his head became reality.  And Steve isn’t alone in his thinking.  Nearly every person who has achieved massive success thinks this very same way.

Making the shift

Jesus once said that if one has faith they can move entire mountains.  A willingness to act with tenacity and veracity is nothing more than actualizing that same faith.  It is through moving the mountains that we demonstrate belief in our vision.

Jedi Master Yoda put it nicely, “Do or do not, there is no try.”  So to go from “trying” to “doing”, henceforth, whenever you encounter an obstacle in your life or in your business – regardless of its magnitude – decide up front if you are willing to address it.  If you are indeed willing to address it, you then must take massive action to see it through.  The only options for you at that point are either to succeed or die trying.  The job must get done and the challenge must be surmounted.  Otherwise, do not act at all.  Either give the challenge your all or don’t give it the time of day.  Anything else should be viewed as unacceptable.

Sure, I understand that shifting this mindset so radically so quickly isn’t going to come naturally, so start with the little things.  It could be as simple as “I am going to go to the gym two days this week.”  Once you’ve established your goal, you are to let nothing stop you, come hell or high water.  You must believe fully in your capability to commit to just this one thing and follow through on it no matter what.

Once you’ve built up your track record of fully committing your very soul to a given task (or several), the belief you will have in yourself and what you can do will be astoundingly magnified.  Eventually you will come to believe that old trope you heard from your parents: “You can do anything if you put your mind to it.”  But first it has to start from little commitments that you keep consistently.  Success is always “do or die.”

Tyler Bennett is a writer, entrepreneur, and graduate student in mathematics who has a passion for helping students get the most out of their education and their lives as a whole. He has authored several books including The Art of Habit Building and The College Handbook They Never Gave You under the pen name Dan Stevens, and is the primary writer for the website TheCollegeSuccessGuide.net . Tyler is married and has four cats.