growth

Dont give Bullshit complements

| johnas9000

Let me give you an example. You look great today, I want to acknowledge you, I loved your podcast. Huh? Those are bullshit? YES. If you are too lazy to spend one extra second thinking about what you specifically liked, just say nothing. As a matter of fact you will be seen as disingenuous or dishonest if you merely throw out a complement without specificity and you’ll have the opposite effect. They won’t trust you and they won’t trust anything you say. They might even view you as a superficial manipulative jerk.

It’s not that complicated. I was looking at a friends podcast yesterday she looked fabulous her face was lit up she had a lot of energy, her voice was great, she added humor and there was a ton of stuff I liked about it, that I could specifically tell her. I told her the blue color went well with her skin tone, and I thought her podcast was fabulous because of her energy and those things. See the difference? If you just tell someone you like some thing or they look great it’s bullshit. It’s lazy. Why can’t you take an extra second and ask yourself what you like about it?

If that’s too much trouble obviously you don’t care. As a matter fact when you give a genuine compliment. You are doing them a favor by giving them the “why”. So you’re helping them to repeat the behavior. So in addition the specific feedback you are giving them will probably have tremendous benefits for them. For example if you took the trouble to notice what color went well with that persons complexion or what energy or adjectives they used or excitement they brought that helped make their podcast interesting they can do it again. And to repeat, they are going to think you are bullshit if you give an empty, vapid complement. So there’s literally 180 degree difference between saying something as vapid as, “I want to acknowledge you versus giving a very specific itemize complement.” And a complement without specificity will have the opposite effect.

You Know! Even if no one else agrees with you.

| johnas9000

I bet you can even tell me stories when you knew something. No one else agreed with you. You went along to get along or assumed the majority was right. Yet you later found out you were right all along.

“Trusting ourselves is one of the most important things that we do.” said my dear friend David Ellzey. I was relating my experience with an extremely famous, website designing company that messed up my new website. I lost 90% of my traffic. I can spend an hour telling you all of their mistakes. They violated every rule and I am still losing a fortune, and they are not even moving to rectify the situation.

Yet they have almost 100, 5-star reviews, and everyone loves them. And people have dealt with them for years. My friend David Ellzey, (by the way fantastic coach Sedona Method), said let’s look at Mercedes as an example.

What if you had a bad salesman, a bad mechanic, the one lemon they had at that dealership? The possibilities are endless where in the chain of events you just got a lemon. Funny as I searched for an image, there were all too many ones of Mercedes and a lemon. Maybe “lemons” are more common than we think.

It doesn’t matter why my experience was awful. No one at that company cares and is fixing things. I had a few meetings where they were defensive. There are times in your life when you just “know” and you are right, and you have to do what you know is right. To me, it’s pretty clear that the company is simply too big. But you can’t change a company or a person. Well actually all of the time, not sometimes. You just can’t change things outside of you. Where have we heard that before?

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.” For whatever reason, they are not going to change. It has been months. Time to go. You know when you know, regardless of other people’s experiences. Trust your judgment. Of course study as much as possible. By the way, the number of things YOU CAN change is monumental. Heck, I don’t even need a website. Everyone I have spoken to understands our experience and integrity. When I ask them if they liked the website, they say “Never been there, I like and trusted you” LOL. Go figure.

So what am I trying to say, Trust yourself, trust your judgment, trust your intuition, if it’s calm and certain. There is a nervous excitement that should not be confused with certainty and intuition. That is when your friend calls you and gives you the greatest stock tip ever, if you just pony up $10,000 today, before 4 pm, and you get all nervous and excited. That is not intuition. Intuition is when you are as certain as the earth under your feet, you are doing the right thing and you will make it work. And ignore the experiences of others. Because sometimes you do get a lemon. It’s bitter. It’s obvious and you know it’s a lemon.

Because when you know you’re right, and follow what you know, no matter what happens, you were true to yourself. That’s worth everything.