Do You Know What You're Talking About?

When someone criticizes you, you have two choices: You can either defend yourself, argue for why they're wrong and you're right. Or you can see if you can find someplace in you where they're right.

I'm certainly familiar with the first choice. My fear was always that if I agree with you, then I must take whatever action you think I should take, or whatever action would be the "correct" response to agreeing. Like if someone says "I think this feature in Simplero is wrong". If I agree, will I now have to change it right now? That could take a long time and cost a lot of money and upset a lot of other customers who are used to it the way it is.

The phrase I like to use now is "you could be right". Even if it's something where I'm pretty sure I'm not off track. But I don't just use it as something to say. I take the time to check in. Can I find a place, any place, within where I genuinely and honestly can see that they could be right? Then I answer from that place.

A talked to someone recently who said she was afraid that people would judge her and say she didn't know what she was talking about.

But isn't it true that, at some level, none of us know what the hell we're talking about? I certainly know it's true for me. At one level, I totally know what I'm talking about. At another level, I know that I can never truly know anything with absolute certainty. And it's certainly the case that I've been wrong many many many times in my life, where I thought I was very certain.

That's my process. I find that place where I genuinely agree with them. And then I can honestly say "you're right, I don't know what I'm talking about some of the time".

And guess what? The criticism no longer hurts. I'm no longer afraid of being judged. I can put myself out there honestly and genuinely without fear of criticism or judgment.

"I don't know what I'm talking about? I can find that. Thanks for pointing it out."

Doesn't mean you have to change a thing. That will always be up to you. You're the authority in your life.

From now on, you'll know you can always look forward to being criticized. Never again will you have to be afraid of anyone's judgment.

There's a lot of freedom in that.

And now for ...

Calvin's Random Links from around the Interwebs

Alan Watt's version of the Chinese farmer story. I too enjoy telling my version of this story.

No, your phone didn't ring, yet you still got a voicemail. What scammers won't do. Of course, this has been a darling strategy of the scammy side of the internet marketing world for years, but the NY Times just learned about it now. I'm curious what the technology behind it is, but the article doesn't say. Still, I hope it gets outlawed.

Marissa Mayer's $900/week Yahoo paycheck dissected. Not a bad payday.

Calvin's Freshest Interviews

Listen to my career journey and all about the Simplero story in my interview with Jane Jackson on Your Career Podcast (iTunes link).

Lots of love,
—Calvin

Did You Know You Could Do This?

When people first sign up to your newsletter, you might want to exclude them from your normal mailings, while they go through a warm up sequence in autoresponses or an automation. Easy way to exclude new contacts from the mailings is to set a trigger on the first autoresponse (or as the first step of the automation) to give people a tag, then on the autoresponse (or the relevant place in the automation), after which you want them to get the normal mailings, you set a trigger to remove that tag. Then when sending broadcasts to your list, you just exclude that tag under recipients and the newcomers will be excluded until the right time. You'll finde a guide with all the details here

Enjoy,
— Merete

What are you interested in learning more about?  We would love to hear from you! Email Deanna at deanna@simplero.com with your questions!

Make it a great week!
—The Simplero Team