Transcript

Ani
Hi and welcome to the Somatic Coaching Academy podcast. Brian, our book came out.

Brian
It’s out.

Ani
Woo-hoo! Manifestation for Dummies.

Brian
We launched. Out.

Ani
That’s right.

Brian
Did it.

Ani
We pushed that book baby out.

Brian
Wow.

Ani
Yeah. Wow.

Brian
It’s fine. It’s circulating itself around the globe even as we speak.

Ani
So listen, if you’re listening to this on podcast day and you you don’t have your book yet, have some grace because the publisher is doing an absolute best job to get it in your hands. Also, if it’s in your hands, yay!

Brian
It’s in your hands! Open up to page 35, we’re gonna read from— no, we’re not gonna do that. But, uh, we hope you are enjoying it. We hope you have your highlighter ready and your little tabs for your pages and your marking things and highlighting and underlining and all that kind of stuff.

Ani
Talking about it, oh, you gotta hear this. But hey, if you hate it, then we gotta Yeah, if you hate it. No, today we’ve got some therapy for us. Exactly. You’re welcome to join.

Brian
Yeah, you’re welcome to join. So what happened? So today we’re going to talk about how to gratefully release criticism and negative reviews. So what happens—

Ani
great topic. It’s just hilarious that you chose it for today, Brian. Yeah, did you do that on purpose?

Brian
I kind of did that on purpose. Yeah, it’s kind of like, you know, thinking through what if we get some nasty reviews.

Ani
Hey, Speaking of reviews, we would love your honest review. Go to Amazon. Amazon’s actually the best place to do it. I know not everybody loves Amazon. I get it. And it’s actually like the best place to do it algorithmically. Is that a big word? Anyway, go to Amazon and let us know what you think. Leave a review on the book, please. Yeah. We’d really love that.

Brian
Yeah. That’s how we get this work spread out in the world further and further and further.

Ani
I should preface this that we would love it. Other people want to know what you think. Yeah. They really do. They want to know what you think. They hear us yapping about what we think all the time. They want to know what you think. So go to Amazon and leave a review. Yeah.

Brian
And maybe even share some of your own manifestation stories and those sorts of things. Yeah.

Ani
Super inspiring. Tell us the topic again.

Brian
Oh, so the topic is basically if you hated the book and you go give a 1-star review, this is how we’re going to approach it.

Ani
But we’re sure that you have times in your life where either you have gotten negative criticism, negativity or criticism, and, uh, you know, you’ve had to deal with it, or you hold yourself back in life because you’re afraid that’s gonna happen. That happens all the time. So this episode is for you if that is a concern of yours. Yeah.

Brian
And even recently we had one of our students, uh, was doing some public speaking and then got a bunch of reviews, of course, after the public speaking. And, uh, as she was reviewing them, like the vast majority of of them were just great, people loved it, but there were one or two that were harsh. And of course, because again, as humans, we have a protectivity bias, we then tend to focus on the criticism, the critical reviews. You tend to focus on that, those negative critical reviews, and then we try to revamp everything we’re doing based on the minority of reviews. And, um, And by the way, then it just hurts and it doesn’t feel good and all that kind of stuff. So we’re here to really talk about a law, a law that helps you to unravel how to deal with that criticism and negativity. Okay, so it stings. Let’s just say criticism stings.

Ani
Yeah, doesn’t it?

Brian
Yeah. So for the vast majority of our students, you know, including ourselves, you’ve experienced criticism before, and it’s ouchy. Yeah, doesn’t feel good. No, and it doesn’t feel good enough that we don’t want to experience that again. And we— our nervous system then will generalize to do things to try to not let that happen again, but inevitably it happens again.

Ani
And then especially if you keep putting yourself out there. Correct.

Brian
Yeah, if you keep putting yourself out there. But again, to your point, this is one of the biggest things that keeps people back from, from growing, from what if, uh, yeah, if that happens, what if that happens, from expanding themselves, all the people.

Ani
Yeah. And then other people who have larger platforms will tell you things like, you’re gonna get the haters, like there’s gonna be lots of haters, so keep going because you’re gonna get lots of haters. And I don’t know about anybody else, but I hear that advice and I’m like, well, that gives me an extra reason not to do it, right? Do it because I don’t want to deal with tons of haters.

Brian
Yeah, but that’s because that’s what, again, people are telling you. So you’re focusing on it, you’re waiting for it, and you’re dealing with the haters. But here’s the thing, we want to talk to you about the bell curve law, the law of the bell curve. Now, maybe even me just saying bell curve just like made you kind of feel sick to your stomach because you remember when you were in school and your teacher said, “We grade according to the bell curve.” And just because of that, then you realize, oh gosh, If you’re kind of in the middle of the class kind of thing, and there’s people that are really, uh, really smart and whatever, high achieving people, you know that they’re going to gobble up the upper end of the bell curve, which means that you’re going to just not get as good a grade because of the curve and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Ani
You could have gotten like a 98, but because of the curve you got a 92 or something like that. So damn.

Brian
So let’s just give the bell curve a chance here for a second. Okay, so just like, let’s just—

Ani
life is not high school.

Brian
Reorient to the bell curve, because the bell curve is actually a law. Uh, it— how you— no matter where you look in your life, there will always be this bell curve. So if you’re not familiar with the bell curve, I don’t have a picture of the bell curve right here with me right now.

Ani
It’s okay, I think we can do this in our heads. It’s not that complicated.

Brian
So look up the bell curve, and when you look at the bell curve, it kind of starts low and then goes up and then comes down.

Ani
I know it’s gonna sound crazy, but it’s shaped like a bell.

Brian
Shaped like a bell. Now what that tells us is that on one side of the bell curve there’s a minority, on the other side of the bell curve there’s a minority, and in the middle of the bell curve there’s a majority. So when we think about, um, people and people that are listening to your message, whether it’s a blog you’re writing whether it’s a talk you’re doing, whether it’s at your family’s Thanksgiving Day table, okay, wherever it is, you will always have a bell curve distribution of a small percentage of people that will love whatever you say. You will always have a small percentage of people that will hate whatever you say, and you will have a, a larger percentage of people in the middle who really won’t care either way.

Ani
They’re more neutral.

Brian
They’re more neutral to it, right? And so, and that’s the bell curve law, and that’s true for anything, anywhere, any place, any time, anywhere that works that way. So just know that that is, that’s just how, how it works. And so when you’re giving a talk, or when you’re writing a book, or when you’re putting out a blog, whatever it is, and if it goes out to 1,000 people, 1,000 people, then on one hand you’re going to have like the numbers vary a little bit between like 10 and 20% of people who are going to love it. You’re going to have between 10 and 20% of people who are just going to hate it and just, just like have all kinds of bad things to say about it. And then you’re going to have that, you know, 60 to 80% of people in the middle who are like, yeah, that was pretty good. I could go this way. Some things I like, some things that— but they’re not really too charged by it. In any way, shape, or form.

Ani
And we’re pretty conditioned for giving 5-star reviews in our society. And so the people who are in that middle section are likely to, if they were rating, for example, your talk, give you a 5-star, not a 3, when they go, yeah, it was good, 5 stars, right? So like when you’re reading feedback, a lot of times that’s the kind of thing that happens. Yes, you will see the 3 stars too, 3-star reviews and stuff, but the way that I’ve noticed that it shows up kind of on that 5-scale rating system is generally when people are like, “It was good,” they’ll give it 5 stars. “It was good.” It’s not until it wasn’t good that people start taking it down a notch.

Brian
Yeah. And then that actually goes to 1 star. So if you look at the distribution of reviews, a lot of times there’s actually mostly 5-star and 1-star. And also because those are the people who feel emotionally charged by the book. Either they loved it or they hated it, so they’re the ones going to say something about it. Right. See that this polarized distribution of how the bell curve kind of works and operates. But here’s the thing, it’s going to work like that no matter what. It’s going to do that no matter what your talk is about.

Ani
Yep.

Brian
No matter what the topic is. No matter what your book’s about.

Ani
What you wore that day.

Brian
No matter what you wore that day.

Ani
How you were feeling.

Brian
Exactly. No matter what book you wrote.

Ani
Whether you stumbled your words or not.

Brian
Yeah, it’s always going to be that percentage. You’re always going to have that distribution of a small percentage of people who love it, no matter, you know, love it, a small percentage of people who hate it, and a large percentage in the middle who can go either way.

Ani
Sometimes the people who hate it say something, and sometimes they don’t. I was teaching my very first Qigong class after Brian and I got certified in Qigong many years ago at our Wellness Center, and I had, I don’t know, 15—

Brian
we had 10 people in the class. I remember this vividly. We had 10 people in the class.

Ani
We had 10 people in the class then, and we had the chairs we had chairs set up, so we had chairs set up. I was— I had the chair at the front of the room teaching, and, um, I was 3 minutes— I mean, it wasn’t long enough to actually get anything.

Brian
It was literally under 3 minutes.

Ani
It was, yeah, so, so quickly. It, um, the person— a person right in the middle of the room stands up, walks out, and leaves. Our main door was off of the classroom area, so they just stood up, turned around, left the class, never saw them again. And I was teaching, of course, and was like, what the heck was that, you know? And then after the class, Brian goes, way to get the bell curve over with right away. I was like, wow, no kidding.

Brian
Yeah, and he’s like, oh my God, he left. But he’s gone, honey. Like, the one person who hated it is gone.

Ani
You got the bell curve out of the way.

Brian
You got it out of the way.

Ani
And it really was true because you can have somebody who doesn’t like it who hangs around, right? And so that was a Blessing.

Brian
Yeah, it just brings the whole thing down.

Ani
Yeah, yeah, right. But it was, um, I was hilarious.

Brian
We had a great rest of that program with 9 people who were like wanted to be there and were like crazy about it.

Ani
Yeah, it was really funny.

Brian
And on one end there was somebody who was like always there really, really early and was super crazy about it. There was that end, and then everybody else was just kind of, you know, super enjoying it.

Ani
It’s really easy to get attached to the people who really, really love it, and remembering this bell curve helps allows you to be unattached from the negativity to when you notice somebody really, really loves it, to not get uber attached to the positivity either. Yeah, it’s really—

Brian
that’s the big point. I’m so glad you’re bringing that up, Ani, because the problem isn’t the bell curve. The problem is how attached we get to the results of the bell curve. To my point, we were talking about with that student who got really attached to these negative reviews, and it creates so much unsettledness. And we’re like, well, how many positive reviews were there? Well, there was, there was equal number of really good reviews and then a bunch in the middle that were just really good, solid reviews with some, um, you know, with some feedback for how it could improve. There was an emotional charge to it. It’s like, oh yeah, I could do things about that. But we get so attached to those negative, negative reviews and criticism. And so we have to know that, um, the bell curve is always gonna be the bell curve. And no matter how you’re perceiving that, oh my God, everybody hated it. We get like, everybody hated it. You gotta watch that. And it was 10% of people who had a problem with it, but that’s gonna happen no matter what.

Ani
Yeah, you got to watch it with the exaggerations, by the way. I’m awesome at those. Yeah, I’m just calling myself out. But like, yeah, you gotta watch it with the exaggeration. If it was literally one or two people—

Brian
yeah, that’s the point. So if you find yourself saying, “Everybody hated it, they really were so nasty and mean,” then realize that you are attached to the outcome that you’re getting, and you’re getting a law-based outcome. You’re going to keep getting that outcome again and again and again, no matter what. You’re just attaching to the the one side of the bell curve. To Annie’s point too, if you get too overly attached to the other side of the bell curve, you’ll get smacked with the negativity. You’ll get smacked with the negativity, but you also get sucked into this idea of hubris because, you know, then you think you’re actually kind of better, maybe performing better than you really are, and you don’t really kind of think about how could I move forward and improve.

Ani
There’s a way to accept everything that is said with other people’s opinions and kind of like revel in the joy that people are talking about it and, and the kind of the idea that people are sharing and people are talking about it. Um, but when you get wrapped up in that positive end, is my experience, because I have done this so many times, that you get extra smacked by the end you don’t like. So my ability to continually, as a practice, remember not to get super sucked into the people who are me I’m amazing. This is so juicy and tempting. But to rather like feel a more centered approach to that and appreciate but not get caught up in their perception really helps to help me navigate not getting my butt kicked by negative criticism.

Brian
Yeah, for sure. Now here’s another little tip. About navigating negative criticism. And I’m not sure this tip’s going to feel good, but it will, will help you if you’re on a growth path and you really want to learn from the, from the criticism side of things is recognize that the criticism that hurts most is the things that you are saying about yourself. Internally and maybe not saying to anybody else.

Ani
Totally. Oh, because it feels so revealing, feels so true. It feels so true and revealing to have somebody say something out loud that you say in your head, and then you’re like, oh my God, that’s true, and now other people know, other people see it.

Brian
So it’s really like, uh, almost like a little humiliation kind of thing happens because you feel like you’ve been exposed. Yeah, because you’ve been saying these things to yourself Anyway, internally, and it might be— you might be saying themself to yourselves kind of below your level of consciousness too. That might not be something that is always kind of on repeat, you know, the broken record playing, but it could be just a little low. And then you get criticism and it really feels like it really stings. You’re actually— you believe that that is true about you, right? That’s why it stings so much.

Ani
Exactly. The charge tells you that that’s what’s going on in there. Yeah. Right? Also, you got to know that people judge— well, we think people judge based on how we judge other people, but everybody judges differently, and people are judging us based on the voices in their head and how they feel about themselves. So congratulations, you now have a shared experience of something that you don’t want to feel about yourself with the person who was talking about them, even though they thought they were talking about you.

Brian
Good point. Good point. Right? They’re just simply— they’re projecting.

Ani
They’re projecting onto you also. Yes, 100%. And I think it’s important to like hold both truths at one time with this because I think it can be a little bit bypassy to be like, you’re projecting, okay, yeah, but also it stung for a reason. It’s going on in you. So take a pause and, you know, somatically work with that and, and do your own work around it because, you know, if you don’t do that, it’s just going to come up again and also then we’re just projecting.

Brian
So yeah, yeah, absolutely. And so the— so that little truth bomb, you can work with that one too. And here’s the— here’s the kind of the exclamation point that we really want you to remember and take away from this is that you’re going to get some feedback, and then oftentimes you get feedback and then you make changes based on the feedback. And oftentimes we make changes based on the feedback that is that negative critical feedback. We’re like, I didn’t like this, I didn’t like that. You’re like, I got to change that, I got to change this. I gotta do that different. I gotta do that different sort of thing. And then we make those changes and then we go back out and we do the talk again or the presentation again or whatever again. And guess what? We get the bell curve again back anyway. It’s just now you have different people that don’t like it. Even if the people that didn’t like you before are now in the like it camp, cuz you changed everything in order for them. Now you have other people that don’t like it because when you focus on the margins of what people really like or what they don’t like, which you do.

Brian
Is you disenfranchise everybody else in the middle. And so the more you try to please the polarizations, the more you actually polarize people and the less you have people in the middle who are just really solid and really satisfied. They might not be over the moon, but they’re really satisfied with what you are presenting. To Annie’s point, you know, if you feel good about it, you’re going to give it a 5. Yeah, right. Those people are just really satisfied. Those people in the middle sort of thing, if you really are serving them well. So here’s the deal. No matter what you do, no matter— you can keep changing what you’re doing. And by the way, all the changes you’re making might not feel like they are really representative of you. You’re changing them to please other people.

Ani
Exactly.

Brian
You’re doing the changes to please other people. You’re not doing the changes because it’s an expression of who you are. And part of the work we do here at the Somatic Coaching Academy is to help people live in the fullest expression of themselves, live in their core purpose, help people to re-embody and express the real purpose that they are on this earth.

Ani
So this doesn’t mean that you’re never going to take feedback. One of the things that we do is when we get feedback, and I’ll just use a negative comment as an example, we go, okay, so what truth does that have for us in how we have been doing things and experiencing them? Is there something that we feel like we could tweak for us, not for that person, but to really help to hone in for us. We’re not trying to please the other person. We are trying to bring excellence to our processes when it is in alignment with us. Mm-hmm. And when we’ve done that, we’ve really made some really powerful tweaks to our own system to create more excellence in the things that we do. We, we will not. Take feedback and then just change it because somebody else said we should so that we please them.

Brian
Correct. Yeah. Now, if we do harm to someone, something like that, then we definitely take that kind of feedback seriously and then approach it in a way where we remediate whatever’s going on.

Ani
Yeah.

Brian
But, you know, what we’re talking about here is doing a talk, doing a book, and a lot of that stuff is just a one-way delivery. And so the way people are reading it, they’re reading it through their lens.

Ani
Right.

Brian
They don’t like it. They tell you they don’t like it. And then to Ani’s point, you know, you can take that feedback however you want to take it. But the, like, the point is, is that whether you are being your best self and by best, I mean your most authentic self, whether you are being your most authentic self or you are being someone that other people want you to be, either way, you’re going to get the same bell curve distribution. Okay, trying to be what other people want you to be, that’s an illusion that I’m gonna get more people to like me because I’m being what they want me to be. You’re still gonna get the same bell curve distribution.

Ani
That might well be you.

Brian
You might as well be you. You’re gonna— because you’re gonna get the same distribution again, but then at least you’re being you. But then you’re gonna have to step over that hurdle of being you is vulnerable, and criticism again will sting more when you’re being you rather than we’re trying to be someone else. When you’re trying to be someone else, then the criticism doesn’t sting as much because it’s not true to you. So that’s why a lot of people follow the path of doing things that other people want them to do, because it’s safer and it doesn’t sting as much. But the brave, courageous, authentic path to purpose, and really what I think joy in the world, is to have the courage to be yourself, be your most authentic self, and the bell curve’s gonna show up. Now, sometimes when you make that transition, if you’ve spent your whole life pleasing other people and you’re making the transition into like your highest self and your authentic self, here’s the thing, you’re gonna still get the same bell curve distribution of people, but the people themselves are going to change. Right? So the people are gonna reorganize themselves, and this goes back to the idea of attachment.

Brian
If the more attached you are to keeping certain people in certain parts of the bell curve, the harder it’s going to be for you to step into your most authentic self.

Ani
Ooh, that’s so good.

Brian
So true.

Ani
That’s so true.

Brian
Realize the percentages are gonna be the same no matter what, but once you make the courageous shift into your authentic self and you commit to being your authentic self, then people stabilize in those places and you won’t change that again because you’re being your most authentic self, living your truest purpose, doing your truest, most meaningful work in the world. And there’s like no life better than that. That’s just an amazing way to be in the world.

Ani
Yeah, that feels, that feels better. Yeah, it feels better. Yeah. I mean, we’re gonna— we’re always gonna have pain of some kind navigating life. Um, these kinds of ways to understand the laws and how our bodies and nervous systems work to help us be in a more spacious and comfortable place in the world, I think is so valuable. Great conversation, Brian. Really appreciate this topic. I love talking about it. I— listeners, I hope you’re getting a lot out of it. Um, let us know your takeaways in the comments. And also, please do go over to Amazon and leave a book review for Manifestation for Dummies when you have read some of it. And we’ll encourage you to do that even if you haven’t finished the whole book because it’s a reference book. It’s not meant necessarily to digest the whole thing before you leave a review. So if you’ve read a chapter or a part or whatever, go ahead and leave a review about it. And then if you, you know, read more and you want to leave another review too, you can. Thanks so much for listening and thanks, Brian, for a great topic.

Ani
Yeah.

Brian
Thanks so much, everybody. Appreciate you being here. Thank you for being here too.

Ani
Oh, well, thank you.

Brian
Thanks. I will— if I get negative reviews later from you, I know exactly what to do with them.

Ani
Never do that, Brian. I would only praise you.

Brian
Equally as dangerous as it may seem.

Ani
Okay, I think we got to go.

Brian
All right, friends, take care. Bye-bye.