We’ve all heard about – and probably experienced – how we’re our own worst critics.
The innate negativity bias that kept us alert to and safe from life-threatening danger in the times of cavemen tends to have us looking for what’s wrong on autopilot. And we tend to fail – chronically – to give ourselves enough credit and be very hard on ourselves in general.
Whether it be in the realm of our body image, personality or behaviors, the work and results we produce, our dating life and relationships, or anything else, flaws that appear tiny – if visible or detectable at all – to others, often seem painfully, cringe-ily obvious and detrimental in our own minds.
Sometimes we think people – our peers, our friends and family, strangers, and even people we claim to fully trust to coach us (and even if we’ve already seen great results from that coaching) – are just being nice and sugarcoating things. And that can be a challenge in itself because yes, sometimes people do sugarcoat things in fear of hurting our feelings and/or self-esteem.
But when we’re dealing with people we trust to be real with us, we often still don’t believe their assessments if they’re more positive than our own.
And one area where this negativity bias can be most rampant is in your work on yourself – your growth in personal development.
I remember our founder, Brian, telling me and many others that when it comes to showing up as more attractive to women and bettering your dating life, women especially tend to see and respond to our growth faster than we do. We’re with ourselves 24/7/365, after all, so gradual changes can be less obvious to us, women tend to be much more sensitive to emotional subtleties, and again, that negativity bias.
Hell, if I’m being real with you, there are still times that part of me can’t accept that the women in my life actually like me or that I’m an attractive and valuable guy.
And that’s the thing. This negativity bias can run pretty damn deep.
It can be straight delusional.
The example that points it out the most to me is looking in the mirror.
I’ve written about this from a slightly different perspective before, but in my quest towards my physique goals, the mirror reminds me how limited – and flat-out inaccurate – the single perspective we have on ourselves can be.
Imagine driving a car with no mirrors or windows other than the windshield. Yikes.
If you’re a sports person like me, imagine referees only ever having one angle for instant replay decisions…or there only being one ref managing the entire game.
For my gym rats, imagine never being able to see your form in a mirror.
Bad results. Very bad.
But we live in our own heads and bodies 100% of the time and often believe our one angle on ourselves.
So back to the mirror.
When I’m towards the end of a lean bulk (gaining weight in a controlled manner to minimize fat gain), I sometimes look down at my body and feel “fat” compared to the end of a cutting phase.
But then I’ll walk in the bathroom, and two things happen:
I look much leaner than I feel when I only see my body from the one angle my eyes give me…
AND my arms look significantly bigger muscularly than I thought!
So not only is my perspective off, but it’s off in the negative both in terms of how lean I am AND how big my muscles are getting.
It just really hits me every time I look in the mirror that it’s a microcosm of how limited and negative our perspectives on ourselves can be.
During one of our “The Double” 13-day intensives, one of our clients told a story about how he got a scar as a child and had resulting insecurities about his looks.
Some of us had known him for years and the rest of the group had known him for nearly two weeks at this point.
Only two of us had ever noticed the scar. Out of 28 people (students, models, and coaches) in the room. Two. 7%.
So, as a high school English teacher of mine said (or quoted someone), “Don’t believe everything you think.”
Be kind to yourself, remember our tendency towards the negative and discounting ourselves, and remember that you being the sole judge of yourself and your growth is like driving with the windshield as your only view of the road.
