This week on Winning In Business, Angus Pryor the Practice Growth Specialist will be sharing with you about whether you are your own worst critic.
Are you your own worst critic? Now I’ve got a question for you, you know, the truth is I’ve done, I added up recently, I’ve done more than 10,000 hours of consulting to dentists in Australia and internationally over the last five or six years. And as much as, you know, dentists engage me for consulting, often what ends up happening is I end up doing some coaching and I was talking to a client recently.
And I’m firmly of the view that if you want to win in life, your own inner game is absolutely essential. Like, for you to win in business, you need to win in life as well. And this particular client, it’s fair to say, I would say this guy was his own worst critic. You know, his internal game was constantly speaking negativity. And I guess what I was trying to do was getting the person to say things in a more positive way.
For example, one of the things that they said, which I thought was interesting was, well, and this is I’m paraphrasing, but well if I’d get off my butt and do that, then things would be better. And I said, “Well, how can we say that in a more positive way?” Because the reality is, our brain, I don’t know if you know this, our brain is designed for survival. And therefore I think the ratio is something like four to one negative thoughts to positive thoughts.
So if we are constantly pumping negative thoughts into our brain ourselves, then it, you know, it’s the opposite of us doing the positive stuff. And it’s really the positive stuff that’s the game changer, the needle mover. I mean, the most successful things in your life will not be because of a string of negative thoughts. It’ll be because of something that was positive that you were prepared to give a go.
This is a little kind of, I guess, a check for you. Are you your own worst critic? And if you are then I guess the question you’ve got to, I like using the term, or maybe, you know like, for example, this individual who said, well, if I’d get off my butt and do it, or maybe I’ve just been really busy, and, you know, I’m going to renew my focus in the next week, you know, or maybe this is just not the right time to pursue this task, but it will be better later. And that’s a way of reframing rather than just allowing this very negative, critical talk in your mind to continue.