Dream Killing and Why You Will Never Be Great

In a few short seconds I almost incinerated a friendship that has spanned most of my life. I had opened up to my friend about what I had worked on in deep cover for the past 3 months.



It probably took a couple of hours to unload everything. My morning routines, my new habits, my physical transformation, my new blog, the raise at my job, the goals I am working towards… everything.

At the end of it all, he gave a thoughtful pause. Then he said “You should re-watch Fight Club. In it Tyler says self-improvement is mental masturbation”… That’s it. Why’d he pick those words? Was he intentionally planning to kill my dreams and erode my goals? Or was he deeply concerned for my well-being?

It took everything in me to hold on to the single fact that I have known him for as long as I’ve known myself. How dangerous is criticism that it can erase almost a lifelong relationship in just a few words?

Greatness comes to those who understand and respect criticism and the two roles that it occupies. On one hand, the person who criticizes others alienates them. Great people want the opposite, they want to bring people towards them. On the other hand, criticism comes as a labor to overcome at each new level you rise towards. If you want to be great, strengthening your defense against the dark arts of criticism should be an ongoing practice.

The Truth about Critics

No matter how high you go in life, there will always be critics who will try to bring you down. You won’t fit their view of the world and so they will try to “fix” you.

Criticism challenges your self-image and exposes your doubts and insecurities. They are just words, but they could make the mightiest of us fall.

One of the most powerful men in the world, the President of the United States, has people on almost all news stations criticizing him. What hope do you and I have to live in a world where we can escape critics?

Critics who love us?

Not all critics are trolling internet commentators. A lot of them are actually people who love us. They are our closest friends and family. They don’t do it to hurt us, at least, not intentionally.

[tweet_box design="default"]You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. - Winston S. Churchill[/tweet_box]

My parents grew up in a time where entrepreneurship was madness. Leave your steady paying job to work for an unsure wage? Ridiculous.

Of course, when I told them that I was working on a side business, they were completely skeptical. Comments rained down like “I should consider myself lucky and be satisfied with what I have”. I know it came from a place of love, but it could have destroyed my aspirations nonetheless.

Those we love may not be aware that the language they use to criticize us can build impregnable walls in our path to greatness.

Me? A Critic?

Most people at some point in their lives have given criticism. Who me? Yes, even you. Don’t believe me? Let’s take a look at some common ones we’re often guilty of:

• We watch sports and a player handles the ball wrong so we shout at the television.


• We aren’t learning in class and we criticize the teacher for having favorites or just not being good at delivery.


• (This is one hits home for me) Someone cuts us off on the road.

Some are simple and no one would fault you, like the first one. But a combination of these on a consistent basis exercises an already over-developed muscle. The truth is, if we don’t learn to control this muscle, we’ll join the increasing number of people who will never be great.

[tweet_box float="left" width="60%" design="box_10"]“To avoid criticism say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.” - Aristotle[/tweet_box]Though we can’t escape criticism, there is still hope. Despite being chided in the media daily, the President of the United States still gets up every morning and runs the country. Despite people trying to tell him what they would do better if they had his money, Bill Gates still dedicates his life to helping the world.

We have hope that we can all stare criticism full in the face and win.

Jack Johnson, the first African-American world heavyweight boxing champion, faced racism and criticism every step on his journey. But in spite of that, he shone his world-famous “bloody grin” to all the haters while sending the “Great White Hope” Jim Jeffries, back to his Alfalfa farm for good.

So how do we stop being so much of a critic? How do we handle critics when we’re pursuing our goals? I’ll talk about each in turn here.

How to stop being a critic

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” – Theodore Roosevelt

Here’s the biggest truth I’ve found out about criticizing people: no one is EVER going to react the way you intended them to after you criticise them. Most of the time, you’ll get the opposite result of what you want.

I’m an introvert. If anyone wonders what that means, a piece of it has to do with how we like to spend most of our time. I am more of the curl up on the couch by myself with some popcorn and a good show kinda guy…. Ah... paradise. This tendency to keep to myself obviously causes complications in a social environment.

One criticism I’ve been getting for years is “You need to smile more”. I’ve tried countless times, but I learned that at an early age that I was stricken with a rare case of resting bitch face. I’m too focused on my internal world, I can’t help it. But it’s safe to end that this criticism in the workplace has only made me more alienated, more self-conscious and not at all a person who smiles more.

[tweet_box design="box_12"]Don't try to win over the haters; you are not a jackass whisperer. - Brené Brown[/tweet_box]

So if you know that criticizing people will only get you either resentment or excuses majority of the time, how do you help someone to change without criticizing them?

Start by realizing that (or if you don’t believe it’s true, just naively go with it) everyone is doing the best that they can with the resources they have. Think of the last person you criticized. Now say that last sentence in your head. Do you think of the person differently? Try that out some more, and use that as a tool going forward.

Maybe that person who cut you off in traffic today had to drop his kids to school and they, as kids do, took too long to get ready, AND his boss said to him yesterday “if you come late another day, don’t bother coming”. So now he is breaking his neck, possibly the law, trying to save his livelihood. I am not saying thinking like this is easy, but it’s worth it if you are trying to be great.

Another thing you can do is focus on their strengths. In the book StrengthsFinder 2.0, scientists conducted studies with more than 10 million people and came to the conclusion that investing in developing a persons’ strengths instead of fixing their shortcoming saw the best results in their personal development.

Being great means helping people be great. Being the kind of person who truly helps others means walking that thin line between giving someone feedback without criticising. And that is a task that if mastered will pay dividend several times over.

Invest your time in the hard task of finding strengths in people you want to help. Once you find those strengths, celebrate them and harness them! Not only will you help them do better in the future, they will love you for it. That’s much better than being resented, isn’t it.

How to deal with criticism

Being a critic is easy. It’s never been easier to be a critic than it is in this generation because of the internet and anonymity.



Basically I am saying tough luck. You can’t escape it. But you can, like the great achievers I mentioned earlier, use it as fuel to propel you to your dreams.

Since we know it is SUPER easy to be a critic, the opposite would also ring true. Not criticizing people takes hard work. It’s still a daily battle for me to not do it, not just in what I say to people, but in my thoughts. Sometimes it slips out when I am annoyed. Like being tired after a hard day of work is my prime time to tell my friends and family what they “should” be doing. It’s especially those times that we need to be careful.

So yeah, it’s freaking hard work and the reality is, most people either won’t have the presence of mind to catch themselves or they tell themselves they just don’t have time for that kind of difficult task. Understand that (read it again if you need to) and accept it.

The first step to dealing with the problem is to embrace that it’s going to be your reality at least 50% of the time… on a good day. Being great comes with its challenges as a rose comes with thorns.

[tweet_dis]Make your goals stronger than the criticism and social pressure you will face.[/tweet_dis]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCvmsMzlF7o

If your goals can’t stand up to criticism, it could either be that your goal is not big enough, or you don’t want it enough. The right goal obliterates any walls that get put before it. If you need to power up your goals, borrow strength from the greats: Thomas Edison, Richard Branson, Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Ghandi, who each went through tremendous struggles to make their dreams a reality.

Surround yourself with a sphere of people who are on their way to their own goals. They won’t criticize you. As a matter of fact, your group will create a symbiotic relationship and give each other energy and most importantly be inoculated against dissenting voices from the outside.

Think of them as your white blood cells on steroids.

They will bring you such positivity and acceptance towards your desires that criticism will seem like a foreign word.
Growing stages matter. One of the best pieces of advice I received when I was trying to deal with criticism was to treat my ideas like they are my children. Don’t share them with the world until they have grown up a little.

I have a real problem with telling people my ideas. I always want them to get excited and jump up on the bed with me and pillow fight. To this date, this has never happened. Maybe my wife will read this and take the hint. Worse yet, most of the time, people take my beautiful ideas and poke holes in them. I would be totally deflated and give up the idea by the next day.

So what I do now is keep my ideas a secret until I have made measurable progress. For example, it’s been over 3 months and I have not yet told my family that I am working my way to 8% body fat, take cold showers, meditate, journal or write blogs. It’s been really working so far… maybe I won’t tell them… ever.

What are some of the craziest or most upsetting criticisms you have ever received? Hold nothing back.

Use expletives if you have to, I won’t mind! I think the most fun one for me is being told I can’t do something because of <Insert reason here>. It makes me really want to prove them wrong.

I will drop EVERYTHING to do it just to see the look on their faces! Tell me yours! How does it make you feel?

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Author Bio: Paul Stennett

Paul Stennett is the co-founder of Amazing Gains, where Business and Health collide. There, he and his wife Alexandra help entrepreneurs be more healthy, productive and profitable. He’s using the knowledge he has gathered over the years and his personal story to help others be better versions of themselves.

You can grab his free eBook "4 Simple Was To Increase Your Productivity" here, ask him a question on Quora or see what he’s up to on snapchat (paul_stennett).

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