reynoldswriting.com Blog

SUPEREGO
Right, he’s asleep.

INNER CRITIC
You wrung him out like a rag today.

SUPEREGO
Oh, pish-tush. A 17-hour day is nothing to an entrepreneur who truly cares about meeting his deadlines.

CREATIVE SPARK
I don’t feel well.

INNER CRITIC
I don’t blame you. I saw what you did today.

CREATIVE SPARK
I did great things. Okay, good things. Okay…Anyway, who can get anything done when he’s being chased all over the frontal lobes by a sadist wielding a hammer?

INNER CRITIC
Wimp. It was a foam rubber Whack-a-Mole mallet, and you know it.

CREATIVE SPARK
I don’t care what it is, it’s distracting.

INNER CRITIC
Do you even have a clue about what my job is?

CREATIVE SPARK
Well, what about my job? What about that?

INNER CRITIC
You give me a pain, you really do. Always leaping up out of nowhere with some half-cocked idea. Every time you throw a lightning bolt I have to shoot the stupid thing down. It’s exhausting. The mallet’s better than you deserve.

SUPEREGO
Stop this bickering, both of you. It reflects poorly on the literary art. Vigilance and work ethic count for far more than any petty internal squabbles. In fact….what time is it?

EGO
4 A.M.

SUPEREGO
Time for me to wake him up and make him wonder if he ran the spell-check on the draft he sent tonight.

INNER CRITIC
Hey, while he’s up, lemme at him for a minute.

CREATIVE SPARK
You’ve had enough fun for one day. Sit down.

INNER CRITIC
He had no business feeling good about that thing. No business. I didn’t even mention the clumsiness of the organization. The pacing was poorly judged too.

CREATIVE SPARK
How am I supposed to spring him into action tomorrow after you two have had your way with him all night?

SUPEREGO
I simply feel that it’s a service provider’s duty to check his work again. And again. And again. He appreciates it, deep down. It makes him feel responsible.

CREATIVE SPARK
It makes him feel sleepy.

INNER CRITIC
Feeling the pressure, are we? Maybe he’ll decide to just stay in bed tomorrow.

SUPEREGO
No, I won’t have that. I’m make sure he notices that utility bill as soon as he wakes up.

CREATIVE SPARK
I won’t allow it either. You want thunderbolts? I’ll show you thunderbolts! And just you try shooting them down once he’s on his third cup of coffee. Just you try!

INNER CRITIC
Yeah? Well, you just wait till he’s completely awake and gets a second look at his work from the night before. Game over, pal! Game freakin’ over!

ID
QUIET UP THERE! I’M TRYING TO WORK!

Once upon a time, I worked the night shift as a temp for the Teacher Retirement System, helping to check thousands on thousands of scanned benefits documents for readability and re-scanning them if any important bits were obscured. During the nine months or so that I worked there (time kind of loses its meaning when you’re driving to work in the dark and driving home at sunrise), I shared the scanning equipment with maybe a half dozen coworkers who tended to come and go — the turnover rate was fairly high, partly from people just getting sick of the job, and partly from firings.

The job was incredibly simple and repetitive, but it carried a daily quota of however-many images per shift. The sheer ease of the job led the supervisors to expect certain levels of speed and accuracy, and if you couldn’t cut it you were let go. It didn’t seem like a terribly high standard to me, but I’ll admit that some nights felt harder than others, and new recruits were usually flailing helplessly for at least a week before they got the hang of the job.

I remember one older lady coming to me during her first week, saying, “I need to ask you how you guys keep your numbers up. I can’t make my quota.”

Since I had no way of knowing what precisely she was having trouble with, I asked, “Are you starting and finishing the shift on time?”

“Sure,” she said. “I just can’t make my numbers.”

“Are you making mistakes and then having to go back and correct them?”

“Nope. I just can’t go fast enough.”

“Are you familiar with the computer program?”

“Yeah, I know what I’m supposed to do. I just can’t make my numbers.”

This game of 20 Questions went on, with the old lady supplying a continuous refrain of “I just can’t,” until I couldn’t think of anything else to ask or suggest. Ultimately, I couldn’t help her because I didn’t know what to tell her. Looking back it now, though, with several years’ business experience under my belt, I know exactly what I should have recommended:

“Stop saying ‘I can’t!’”

I’ve talked before about my preference for positive reinforcement over negative reinforcement in copywriting; I’ll never use a stick when a carrot will do. But if it’s true for marketing, maybe it’s just as true in everyday life.

Every time we say “I can’t,” our ears hear it, they send it to our brain, our brain records it, and we believe it. And we act on our beliefs. That’s how hypnotism works, for example, to disrupt bad habits, change attitudes, remove phobias, or help control pain. The brain decides to accept the suggestions given to it by the hypnotist, and it acts on those suggestions as part of a new belief system. This is also how self-esteem works. You don’t believe you are charming and confident because you are; you’re charming and confident because you believe you are.

Unfortunately, negative suggestions can work just as effectively as positive ones, often on a subliminal level. We might be feeding ourselves on a constant stream of negative reinforcement without ever realizing it. And it can be as innocuous as a simple “I can’t.”

We small business owners must avoid “I can’t” at all costs. “I can’t” will eat your business alive, and possibly you with it. Try “I choose to” instead. You’ll feel better. You might even find that you can.