On Criticizing Yourself Instead of Others.

[Greg R]

Have you ever watched an entrepreneurial reality show like Shark Tank or The Profit and cringed at some of the answers that they gave the host's questions???

"If we could capture 1% of the total market, then we will be rich."

"If you tell me to jump, I will say how high?"

"Our customer is literally everyone!"

As much as I smack my forehead and Monday Morning Quarterback what I would do in that situation, I have to take a step back and wonder...

What am I doing wrong in business or life where if someone is watching, they would slap their forehead?

Sometimes I wish there was a camera on my life so I can see myself in the third person and be able to critique my choices and actions. I journal almost everyday, but that really doesn't have the same effect.

Either way, I think that it is important that we try to reflect on our thoughts, opinions, and actions on a daily basis.

In Stoicism they say to use confidence with things that are out of our control and use caution with things that are in our control (will, choices, opinions). This will help us uncover the truth and guide us down the right path.

Do you wish you could see yourself in the third person?

EDIT: Title and grammar.

 

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[ZF Lee]

That is why this Forum, as well as many other channels involving sourcing failure stories from veterans, friends (even SCRIPT people or victims), are so important to me. They give me insights for me to think of, comparing them with my own progress, and I judge whether I might be in the risk of committing such errors or I might be doing them already...

This kind of 'reflective learning' helps more than you ever know in learning and overcoming the curve. You are actually stimulating the mental rudiments in preparation for execution....a Piagetian formal operational stage in which you can reason about objects without having to handle or see them, or abstract thinking. Unfortunately, according to my grim psychology lecturer, not many reach that stage of enhanced cognitive performance, and as a result, they can't learn. And when you can't learn, you can't get rich quickly.

Although we learn from failures or mistakes, there are mistakes that can kill us, mistakes that eat our time horribly and mistakes that we can't learn due to our industry constraints. While we generally focus more on the wins and not too much on the losses, 'on the ground' insights from reflections might be another good tool in the mental toolbox to reduce the mistakes.

On journals, I keep one because of the Miracle Morning advice on fighting Monday Blues. Gives me a purpose for the day to record the story behind every dollar that comes into the accounts, behind every customer I help out. And eventually when I make it, I won't have to scrabble by head to produce a good thread here on my experiences...I can just go back to my journal and unload everything here!

MJ's customer complaints and praises black book might be still consider to be a form of a journal, you know?