In this week's episode, I discover I'm actually married to a robot. Or possibly an android. Either way, I'm alarmed and confused, because Joe doesn't ever talk to himself. He has no inner dialogue. Which makes the inside of his head considerably calmer than the inside of mine. This week, we talk about the way we talk to ourselves, the negativity bias, and why we all ought to be a bit more bloody kind to ourselves. And each other.
Key Points
- [0:50] Today is book launch day!!!
- [2:30] Thank you so much for the support and the people who have been sharing on social media and emailing Vicky!
- [10:00] Vicky talks to herself a lot, and how you talk to yourself determines the quality of your life.
- [16:30] It takes five good deeds in a relationship to make up for one bad one.
- [18:05] Words shape our reality, which is why it’s so important to talk to yourself correctly.We shape our reality with the words that we use.
- [22:20] There’s a difference between being arrogant and being proud of yourself.
- [24:30] Are you about to say something mean to yourself? Would you say this to someone else? If you wouldn’t, then don’t say it to yourself.
- [25:00] Vicky has written a lot of books, but this is her first time doing a book launch. Look for next week’s episode where she shares some of her takeaways on how to successfully execute one.
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Episode Transcript
Business For Superheroes Podcast Transcription: Episode Two Hundred And One: Inner Critic Or Inner Dickhead
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*In an industry stuffed with marketing bullshit, empty promises and shiny-suited liars, one woman’s had enough. She knows what it’s like to have the wrong clients, no money and no time for fun, but she also knows how to fix it, and, on the Business For Superheroes Show, she promises to tell the down and dirty truth about business, sales and running away with the circus! Here’s your host: Vicky Fraser…*
Vicky: Hello, and welcome to the 1,000 Authors show! If you're watching this podcast, then you get a demonstration in action of my inner dickhead, and the fact that I have a tiny pinhead, and look, there's normal-sized Joe and my tiny pinhead. If you're listening to this podcast that means nothing to you, and you should just ignore everything that we just said.
Joe: Hello.
Vicky: Hi! I'm Vicky Fraser, and this is my husband, Joe.
Joe: Hello.
Vicky: Hello. This might be a rambly mess because I am quite frazzled.
Joe: Today is launch day.
Vicky: It's book launch day, yeah. Um, what are we drinking?
Joe: Fake beer.
Vicky: Fake beer, hurrah, cheers. I'm drinking Heineken Zero, other beers are available.
Joe: This is one of them, Bavaria Zero.
Vicky: They're great.
Joe: Well, I mean, it's all right. It's not really beer though, is it.
Vicky: I like it. We've just booked tickets to go and see the Life Lessons event down at the Barbican Center on February the 15th.
Joe: Nice.
Vicky: I'm really excited. We're going to see Marie Forleo, which I'm more excited about than Joe, I think.
Joe: I don't know who that is.
Vicky: You will, she's got amazing hair. You'll be like, "Oh my god, that woman's got amazing hair." And we're going to see Bill Bryson talk about his new book, The Body.
Joe: I do know who that is.
Vicky: Yes, and we're also going to see Richard Dawkins and the Reverend Richard Coles talk about finding happiness in the world with or without God, which I'm really looking forward to because I absolutely love the Reverend Richard Coles. I like Richard Dawkins as well, but he's less lovable. Anyway, that's what we are excited about.
Joe: Yes
Vicky: Well, I'm really excited about my book launch but frankly, it's just been, yeah. I just wanted to thank everybody who has helped me today because I recruited a bunch of people, some quite famous, some less famous, but no less wonderful, to help me launch my book, and they have all stepped up and they've sent me some amazing resources. So if you buy my book, during the launch period, which is going on probably 'til the end of February...
Joe: Mm-hmm.
Vicky: ...You will get access to some of the great advice that they've provided for me, along with some other tasty swag.
Joe: Nice.
Vicky: But yeah, they've just sent out... They're sending out emails and social media posts for me. Some of the stuff they've said has just been so lovely.
Joe: Very nice. Very warm.
Vicky: It's been, really really lovely, so I just want to thank everyone. And I'm gonna shout out to the people who have emailed so far. Yinka, love you Yinka, thank you so much. You sent an email this morning that made me cry.
Joe: Hi Yinka.
Vicky: Jamie, hi Jamie.
Joe: Hi, Jamie.
Vicky: Sent a lovely, lovely email. Jamie Beach, she is a PR expert for small businesses, who also sent a lovely email this morning. See, now I'm gonna forget people.
Joe: Well you started it, you should have had a list.
Vicky: I know and I have it, I had a list. And, um...
Joe: And you're gonna find it.
Vicky: ] I'm gonna find it right now.
Joe: Talk amongst yourselves.
Vicky: Julia, Julia sent a fabulous email for me. Thank you Julia, Julia Brown does all my book cover designs. She's a wonderful artist.
Joe: Hi Julia.
Vicky: John, John McCullock, the evil boy genius, sent a lovely email this morning telling people to buy my book, which is fabulous. Thank you John. And Christian, is, well, he hasn't sent it yet, but he's forwarded it to me so I know it's going out tomorrow, he sent a really lovely email as well, hasn't he?
Joe: Cool, yeah.
Vicky: And then a few other people have promised that they will help me over the next few days and just, they'll get shoutouts on the next podcast, I guess.
Joe: Sweet.
Vicky: It's just been fabulous. I'm very, very grateful for everybody's help and support. Anyway, back to the podcast. Joe, what are you reading at the moment?
Joe: Aw man, I'm reading "The Wheel of Bloody Time" by Robert Jordan, still, again. I'm on like book 75 or something.
Vicky: But you're about to start reading "How Long 'til Black Future Month", aren't you? Because I mean, I've got to make you do that.
Joe: It's just going to take longer for me to finish this "Bloody Wheel Of Time" if you keep putting books in the way.
Vicky: Well, yeah, but "How Long 'til Black Future Month" is a book of short stories. So you could read a couple and then read a bit more of your "Wheel of Time".
Joe: Read another six "Wheel Of Time" books?
Vicky: Yeah. And then read a couple of short stories.
Joe: Okay.
Vicky: Um, I've loved those short stories. They've been so good.
Joe: Okay.
Vicky: One of them was about pocket universes.
Joe: Cool.
Vicky: Yeah. I am reading... actually I'm not. I'm between books because I finished N.K. Jemisin's short stories last night.
Joe: Mm-hmm.
Vicky: And it's not yet tonight, um, but I am going to be picking up "The Outsider" by Stephen King, which is his latest book. I don't really know anything about it. I think it's like a mystery thriller. So I can't really say much about it, other than that's the one that I'm going to be reading tonight.
Joe: Okay.
Vicky: So I'll be able to talk more about that next week.
Joe: I got a bit over Stephen King.
Vicky: Why?
Joe: When I was a late teenager, I read everything I could find, and they were all like an enormous commitment, and huge, and very good, and I kind of just... ran out of Stephen King-iness... enthusiasm.
Vicky: They're not all enormous. Because if you read "The Stand" and... kind of, um... Why can I only think of one of his books right now? What's another big one? If you read "The Stand" and "It", and, you know...
Joe: "It" is a big book.
Vicky: It's a big book. "The Stand" is an epic book. If you read those back to back, then yeah, that's quite a lot of Stephen King.
Joe: It's a lot of Stephen King. Yeah, I kind of did, maybe a year of just like massive foot-thick Stephen King books.
Vicky: But, you know... Speaking of massive books, Did you know that there's somebody out there who chops big books in half to make them more portable?
Joe: I've seen such a thing done. It's quite rude.
Vicky: I am not on board with that at all. I mean, there's a certain practicality about it, but... Nah. Anyway, Stephen King, does a lot of short stories as well.
Joe: Yeah, but he does them in big books. You get a big book of short stories.
Vicky: You can get them on Kindle. Anyway, my non-fiction book that I'm reading, I'm still reading, as of this recording, "The Happiness Project" by Gretchen Rubin. I've almost finished it.
Joe: Mm-hmm.
Vicky: But I've already started doing stuff from that, because when I read non-fiction books, I always want to not just read them, I want to use them.
Joe: Do them.
Vicky: And one of the things that we've done, I was about to wave it in people's faces, but it's not in my office.
Joe: Not within your reach.
Vicky: No. It's, um... We made a picture book, didn't we?
Joe: We did.
Vicky: And it was really good fun and it was a really lovely thing.
Joe: Really good thing. Well worth doing.
Vicky: And if you saw Flamingo Friday, um, I don't know if I'm going to do it tomorrow, which will be last Friday......If you're listening to this.
Joe: We really need to sort out...The future, perfect, past tense thing.
Vicky: Yeah. Anyway, at some point, I have been, will be doing, a video featuring said photo book.
Joe: Yes.
Vicky: But that was one of my little happinesses.
Joe: What's a photo book? What photo book? What are you talking about?
Vicky: Well... I wanted... You know how you just take loads of photos?
Joe: Loads of photos. I know how you take loads of photos.
Vicky: I do, yeah.
Joe: Every time we're trying to do something, or go somewhere, or choose something, you're taking photos of it.
Vicky: Anyway, they sit on my phone, or iCloud, or whatever, or they sit on Facebook. And then you don't really look at them again.
Joe:You never see them again.
Vicky: And there's so many of them.
Joe: Mm-hmm. Millions.
Vicky: And I wanted to... I kept... I keep, every year, I keep being like, "Oh, I'm going to get a photo album, and I'm going to get photos printed, and I'm going to put them in." And every year, I don't do that, because it's a right faff.
Joe: Mm-hmm.
Vicky: Because it's not like the old days... Kids, what used to happen, right, is that you used to take photographs, and then you used to send the film off to be developed. And it would take weeks.
Joe: And they'd all come back blurry.
Vicky: And they'd all come back blurry. Um, but you would take those photographs and the ones that were halfway decent, you would stick in a photo album.
Joe: Mm-hmm.
Vicky: You might have seen them at your parents' house.
Joe: Mm. Or your grandmother's house, maybe.
Vicky: Your grandmother, yeah. Great-grandparents, I don't know. But yeah, that was what I kind of wanted to do because I love a photo album.
Joe: Screw that, that's a lot of work.
Vicky: Yeah, and I just wasn't... And then I thought, "Well, let's use photo books." And my hairdresser had this book on her table, and I had a look at it...
Joe: Hi, May.
Vicky: Hi, May! And it was... She did it on an app on her phone. And that's what I'm going to talk about. But anyway... We've got highlights from 2019 at the Dingle.
Joe: Just a Dingle annual.
Vicky: Yeah, and our travels as well. And a little bit of 2018, because we were in San Diego.
Joe: Yeah.
Vicky: So... Anyway, what were we talking about this week?
Joe: Jeez, that was a long preamble.
Vicky: It was, and everybody was promised that we were going to be talking about "Inner Critic or Inner Dickhead".
Joe: Were they?
Vicky: Well, yeah, because that's the title of the podcast.
Joe: I think at the end of the last podcast, we had no clue what we were going to talk about.
Vicky: Yes.
Joe: Okay.
Vicky: I promised them this morning when they received the email.
Joe: Planning.
Vicky: "Inner Critic or Inner Dickhead".
Joe: Right?
Vicky: Right. So I call the mean voice inside my head my "Inner Dickhead," because it's horrible. It's horrible to me. Do you have an Inner Dickhead?
Joe: We've discussed this at great length on many occasions, and I have goldfish.
Vicky: You don't though. Because you do have thoughts in your head sometimes.
Joe: Yeah, but only if I, like, consciously sit down and go, "Right, I now need to think about this." Then I think about that. Then I revert back to goldfish.
Vicky: I don't think that's true. I don't think that's true. I think you're messing with me.
Joe: Honestly, it's just...
Vicky: Do you never, like, get sad about things, or worried about things?
Joe: No.
Vicky: Are you a robot?
Joe: Maybe. I think. Perhaps.
Vicky: Right, for the humans in the audience...
Joe: Send me an email if that's your experience too, dear listener.
Vicky: podcast@vickyfraser.com
Joe: podcast@vickyfraser.com
Vicky: I should set you up an email address, joe@vickyfraser.com. Don't send it to that, because it will bounce. Unless I manage to do that before… Before this podcast goes out.
Joe: But you won't. And then it'll bounce.
Vicky: Yeah. Um, but yeah. I constantly talk to myself. Do you not talk to yourself?
Joe: Not really, no. Our internal head spaces are entirely different.
Vicky: Yeah, I want your head space.
Joe: It's calm.
Vicky: Although...
Joe: It's kind of empty.
Vicky: See, that's not true. You're painting yourself as an empty-headed idiot, and that's not who you are at all.
Joe: Mm...
Vicky: Right. Anyway, I talk to myself a lot. I spend a lot of time on my own as well.
Joe: You do. You do.
Vicky: Um, but... And I think a lot of people talk to themselves, especially if they're writers and business owners. And they work on their own. And how you talk to yourself determines the quality of your life. Would you agree with that?
Joe: No, well, I... I don't talk to myself, so I don't know. I think how you think about yourself and how you see yourself affects your life.
Vicky: Yeah. But you must think about yourself sometimes, right? Oh my god!
Joe: What would I think about?
Vicky: I'm just, I'm now, I'm writing the show notes, so...
Joe: Five minutes into, you know, the hairdressers, I'm thinking, "What haircut should I have?"
Vicky: You know the blurb that goes on the podcast, I'm internally writing it as I'm talking, and I was going to say, "In this episode, Vicky discovers that she's married to an android."
Joe: I just, I don't get it.
Vicky: Aw, man. Right, okay. I don't really know where to go from here. I feel like you've ruined my podcast.
Joe: I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Go for it. Crack on with and I'll just look confused.
Vicky: Okay. Everybody except Joe tends to have internal monologues, and internal conversations with themselves. Yeah, probably not just Joe, probably other people as well. Probably marginalizing all kinds of people with different ways of thinking, and for that I apologize, but you know. I'm talking from my own point of view. Okay, me and people like me... ...Have internal monologues, and I don't know about other people who are like me. But I tend to talk really cruelly to myself.
Joe: You do, and I overhear you talking about yourself really cruelly sometimes.
Vicky: Do you?
Joe: Yeah.
Vicky: Oh.
Joe: Sometimes you mutter things to yourself.
Vicky: So they spill out of my face?
Joe: And that... Yeah, just these internal thoughts. Externalized. And almost invariably, they're quite cruel.
Vicky: Really? Oh, wow. I also say nice things. Sometimes, I'm like, "Oh, you're awesome."
Joe: Mmm... Do you?
Vicky: Yeah. Sometimes I do.
Joe: I think, I think...
Vicky: Like every now and then, I'll get my makeup right, and I'll be like, "Ah, you look like a grown up's done your makeup. Yay!"
Joe: Uh, okay. Good. Good, good.
Vicky: Or I'll look at one of my pole videos and be like, "Oh, my ass looks pretty good there."
Joe: Your ass does look pretty good.
Vicky: Or, "That was pretty good, I didn't hit the floor with my face." Yeah. Or sometimes I will write something, and I'm like, "I think that's really good and I want to show it to people." Hmm. I think there's this belief... I'm gonna go off on another slight tangent now. And this is actually spun off from one of my favorite YouTube shows, which is "HAMYAW", which is an acronym for "Hillary And Margo Yell At Websites."
Joe: Okay.
Vicky: And Margo was on my podcast recently.
Joe: Oh, yes. Hi, Margo.
Vicky: Hi! And, so, anyway, they were talking about going pro. The Steven Pressfield, "War of Art," "Going Pro" thing, and amateurs versus professionals.
Joe: Uh-huh.
Vicky: And how there seems to be this thing, particularly with writers, where you have to spend all of your time berating yourself for being crap.
Joe: Okay.
Vicky: Saying, "Oh, this is dreadful, everyone's going to hate it." And I think we do spend a lot of time doing that. I know I do. I spend quite a lot of time worrying, and it's like, "Oh, this is gonna be crap." But, every now and then, I'll write something, and I'm like, "Actually, this is pretty fucking good." And I'll be really pleased with it. And sometimes I even come back a couple of days later, and I still think it's really good.
Joe: Right. Not just short term impressed with yourself, but...
Vicky: Yeah. I mean the other thing happens the other way around as well. So sometimes I'll write something that I think is great, and I'll come back a couple of days later, and I'll be like "Ugh! That's real bad, I'm really glad I didn't send that anywhere." And sometimes I'll write stuff, and I'll think it's terrible. And I'll come back a little bit later, and be like, "Oh, that's pretty good." So, yeah, that's... But I think it's okay... Basically, it's okay to think you're awesome sometimes, because you are. But we don't really tell ourselves that very often. We mostly tend to be self-critical if we're talking about ourselves. We say stuff to ourselves that we would never say to someone else.
Joe: That is very true.
Vicky: Oh, I certainly do, anyway. There's no way I would speak to somebody that I care about the way I sometimes speak to myself. And that made me think, does that mean that I don't care about myself? Because that's quite sad. I think I do care about myself.
Joe: Yeah.
Vicky: But then I should act like it.
Joe: Maybe you put yourself lower down the pile than you should.
Vicky: Yeah, maybe I do. So, I want to, we wanted to talk today about the effects that the words that you use about yourself and to yourself have on your self-confidence and self-worth.
Joe: Okay.
Vicky: And how, quite often, we are... It's our automatic reaction to go to the negative instead of the positive.
Joe: Mm-hmm.
Vicky: Instead of being like, "Oh, that didn't go very well, let's see how it could get better," I'll drop something, and be like, "Oh, you idiot!"
Joe: Mm-hmm.
Vicky: And even just stuff as innocuous sounding as that will really affect the way that you see yourself. And, you know, the effect it has on your self esteem. If you tell yourself you're an idiot five times a day, you're going to start to believe it.
Joe: Mm-hmm. It's true.
Vicky: And, you know, I get very frustrated because I drop things sometimes. And it's just really annoying. And so I'm like "Aah!" And then I'll call myself an idiot. And what I should be doing is calling my fingers an idiot. It's a separate part of me. Anyway... The reason we do this, the reason we do this is because of the negativity bias.
Joe: Okay. The negativity bias.
Vicky: Yeah. Do you know what that is?
Joe: Is that to with the fact that it's... You know, if you're in your loin cloth strolling through the jungle, it's better to assume there is a tiger behind that bush?
Vicky: Yeah. Basically.
Joe: If something rustles, it's probably bad news.
Vicky: Yeah.
Joe: It's a safer bet than saying, "Well, it's probably not bad news."
Vicky: Yes. That's exactly what the negativity bias is. We are programmed, if you want to use that word, to be on the lookout for danger. We've evolved to be on the lookout for danger, because otherwise, we would die really quickly.
Joe: Mm-hmm.
Vicky: We notice the negative stuff first, and that also has a bigger and longer lasting impact on us. For example, there's been research done, cannot remember by who, because I made notes while I was listening to something interesting the other day. I didn't make notes about who this research was by. But there's research that shows that it takes five good deeds in a relationship to make up for one bad one.
Joe: Okay.
Vicky: So if you say something mean to your spouse or your partner, it takes like five good deeds to wipe that out.
Joe: Okay.
Vicky: Because you tend to focus on the bad, and not the good. Which is crazy, and it's like... There might be an amazing painting up in a gallery, but if there's a fly on it, you'll notice the fly. Which is ridiculous. If you've got a spot on your face, but the rest of you looks great, you'll notice the spot immediately. That's what it is. And so... Yeah, and it used to serve us. It used to keep us alive. But nowadays, it tends to keep us stuck. And miserable. And it erodes our self confidence and our self esteem. And we speak to ourselves in a way that is not useful and helpful. Because, um, this is... One of my mentors, Anna... Hi, Anna!
Joe: Hi, Anna!
Vicky: She's fab, and she was talking a lot about inner critics. She calls it inner critic rather than inner dickhead, because it actually has your best interests at heart, or it used to. Um, but she says, "Words are the building blocks of reality." And I really think that's true. Because we are creatures of language. We shape our reality with the words that we use. You think about how persuasion works, and how books have the power to... You know when you're reading a book, I don't know about you but I can see the story in my head.
I can see people and I can see the landscape. So, you know, words have the power to shape your reality. And the more you tell yourself something, the more you'll believe it, and the more it will start to come true.
Joe: Yes.
Vicky: So it's super important that you use the right words about yourself and to yourself, and about the work that you're doing.
Joe: Can I interject with my very short little story from the past?
Vicky: Yeah, please do.
Joe: I once worked for somebody who said "Perception is reality." The next day, I stopped working for him. That's the story. I could not deal. He really believed it. He really believed it.
Vicky: But...
Joe: But the way he... Because I was all about the doing things. And he was all about the making sure that people saw that we were doing things. And I wanted to do the things.
Vicky: Oh, I see.
Joe: And he wanted to just get the posters out that said we'd done it. It was bad.
Vicky: Oh. Well, yeah, that is bad. Because I was thinking, "Well, you can't just stop working for somebody because they have a different worldview from you." But no, that's unethical.
Joe: Yeah.
Vicky: Yeah. Okay. I get it. When you tell stories like that, you have to explain them a little. So yes...Derailed me now.
Joe: Derailed. Sorry.
Vicky: That's okay. Um, yeah. Basically, brains love repetition, and the words we use will create the reality we live in. So if you're telling yourself that you're always rubbish, you're rubbish at everything, blah, blah, blah, then that's the reality you're gonna live in, whether that's true or not. To you, that's gonna be how the world is.
Joe: Sure.
Vicky: So it's really, really important that you think carefully about what you're saying to yourself and how you say it. And the more you repeat something as well, the more ingrained it becomes. So if you're in the habit of speaking to yourself... And it is, it does become a habit, because it's become a habit for me. If I do, if I like, drop something, I'm like, "Oh, you idiot." It's just a reflex.
Joe: Mm-hmm.
Vicky: It's a reflex thing. So I have to work really hard not to look that. Because brains... That's how habits work, that's how brains work. So I want everybody after listening to this podcast to change the nature of the conversation that you have with yourself.
Joe: Make it nicer. Make it warmer.
Vicky: Yeah. And...
Joe: Be kinder.
Vicky: Be kinder, yeah. And stop, stop listening so much to the inner dickhead. And start listening to your inner champion. Because there are two voices, or at least two voices in most peoples' heads. Like I said, I've got the voice that's like "Oh, you can't do this and you're not good enough," and, you know, all that other stuff that stops you from writing your book, or stops you from doing the big scary thing that could be amazing. But you've also got another voice that says "Yes, you can." Because otherwise, you wouldn't even consider doing the thing that you then stop doing. So it's all about kind of remembering that you've got that quiet voice as well. The quiet voice that says, "You know what, you can do this. Give it a try." I'm always working on this as well. Debunking what my inner dickhead says.
So that's one of the techniques I use if I'm like, "Oh, I'm not good enough to do this." I will go and I will dig out one of the lovely things that one of my clients has said, or I will go and look at one of the books that are sitting on the shelf behind me that one of my clients has written, and it's like, "I do know what I'm doing. You know, I can do this. I am good enough to be doing this." And I will find evidence to debunk. And remember what I said, it takes five good things to wipe out one bad thing. So for every negative thought that you have, you might have to go and find five pieces of evidence that show that inner dickhead that it's talking nonsense. But it's worth doing. If you think you haven't got time to do it, make time to do it. Because it's really worth doing. Because otherwise, you're just going to get more and more... You're just going to get smaller and smaller.
Your inner voice, your inner dickhead will push you into becoming smaller for other people as well. Because other people... This is kind of related, but kind of tangential... You know how other people sometimes... We talked about this before, sabotage. People who are on diets, "Aw, just have a cake." You know, "Just do this." And the reason that they do that is because they are afraid of change. They don't want to see you achieving something that they feel that they can't do. And so you make yourself smaller. I get really uncomfortable when people are like, "You know, you do so many things, and you do them really well." My automatic reaction is to go, "Oh, no. No, no, no." But then I'm like, "Why?" Why do I feel like I have to reduce myself to make other people feel less uncomfortable, or to feel some other way. Which has nothing to do with me. It's got nothing to do with me. And it's the same with you.
So don't ever make yourself smaller to accommodate other peoples' insecurities. Because you're not doing yourself or them any favors. And I think your inner dickhead will push you to do that, like, "Oh, don't stand out. Don't push yourself forward too much."
Joe: Yeah. Don't stick your stick your hand up. Don't be noticeable.
Vicky: Yeah. Don't make out like you think you're all that. And that's the other thing, isn't it, we're told that, you know, "Be self effacing. Be humble." And there's a different between being an arrogant twat and being proud of yourself. And I don't think that there's anything wrong with being proud of yourself yet we really seem to struggle with it. I really seem to struggle with it. You know, it's very difficult for me to be like, "Actually, I'm really chuffed with this." Because what if someone looks at me and thinks I'm an arrogant twat. Not my problem. Right then. That's pretty much it.
Joe: There are some more words.
Vicky: There are more words, but they're all the words I've already said, really.
Joe: Fair enough.
Vicky: Yeah. I don't want to say them again. Yeah.
Joe: Okay. So, what's the takeaway?
Vicky: I've got one thing for people to do, and then I've got a takeaway for them.
Joe: Okay.
Vicky: So one thing for people... No, two things.
Joe: Things for people to do.
Vicky: Things for people to do. Ask yourself what knocks your self worth and your self esteem. Because once you can recognize that, then you'll recognize what triggers your inner dickhead to start piping up with "You're not good enough," and that kind of thing. So what knocks you. For me, for example, it's when people are short with me, or snappy with me, or otherwise less friendly than I think they should be.
Joe: Because it's all about you.
Vicky: It's all about me, yeah. But that's the thing...
Joe: That's your perception.
Vicky: That's the way we are wired. We are the center of our own universes. And if someone's being short with me, that's obviously because I've done something. Whereas actually, it could be any one of a thousand reasons, and it's probably nothing to do with me. Not everything is about me. In fact, nothing is about me. Almost nothing is about you. And that's a really helpful thing to remember, actually, you're the center of your own universe, but nobody else gives a shit. So that's really cool. So ask yourself what knocks your self worth and your self esteem so that you can recognize it when it crops up, and then get in there first, before your inner dickhead comes in and tries to sabotage you. And the takeaway...
Joe: Change the nature of the conversation with yourself.
Vicky: Yeah. Be nicer to yourself, basically.
Joe: Be kind. Be as kind to yourself as you would like other people to be with you.
Vicky: Yeah. If you're about to say something mean to yourself, think to yourself, "Would I say this to someone else?" And if you wouldn't, don't say it to yourself. I'm telling me as much as anyone else.
Joe: I know. I know.
Vicky: Right then. Next week, we are going to be...
Joe: Talking about...
Vicky: Learnings from the book launch.
- [Joe] Learnings from the book launch. That was a snap decision. Well done.
Vicky: No it wasn't. Look. It's already there, see.
Joe: Yeah.
Vicky: It is. "Learnings from the book launch," because today is my first ever book launch. I've written a lot of books, I've never launched any, because my clients tend to take care of that themselves. So I have launched my first book and I have learned many, many things, the first 10 of which are all exactly the same thing. But I'll come to that next week.
Joe: There are more than 10.
Vicky: There are more than 10 things I've learned, but the first 10 are all the same. So we'll be doing learnings from my book launch next week. But in the meantime, my book's just been launched. So, go to... Ah, shit. Where is it. Go to moxiebooks.co.uk/feb2020booklaunch. The link is in the show notes, and in the thing underneath the video, if you're watching the video.
Joe: Okay, cool.
Vicky: So you go there, Feb 2020 Book Launch, and you can decide how many copies of the book you want, depending on how many goodies you want. You follow the instructions on there, you grab your book from wherever you want to grab it from, forward your receipt to harriet@vickyfraser.com, add yourself to the official and exclusive list to get the freebies immediately.
Joe: Good stuff.
Vicky: And then wait for your goodies to arrive. I'll be sending them all out during February.
Joe: Nice.
Vicky: Yeah. So that's the most exciting thing that's going on in my world at the moment. And then, next week, I'll be talking about the retreat I'm running in Fuerteventura, which might possibly be just for me.
Vicky: But I don't know yet. I'll be running one later in the year. If you've listened to every episode of this podcast, email me with your postal address, and I will send you a little something silly.
Joe: Because you're clearly a lunatic.
Vicky: If you like this podcast, please go and subscribe on iTunes and rate us.
Joe:Five stars.
Vicky: Five stars. If you don't like us, other podcasts are available. Leave us a review. Please leave us a review. We really love reviews. Joe loves reviews.
Joe: I do love reviews.
Vicky: He loves reviews.
Joe: Good review.
Vicky: And it will help people find us, and it will help more people learn how to write a book, and how to deal with the ridiculous inner dickhead in us, and maybe give people a few ideas on how to read, write, and generally be a more interesting human. We'll be back same time next week. Thanks very much. Thanks Joe.
Joe: No worries. Bye!
Vicky: Bye!
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If you want to learn more about how to write, self-publish, and market a book for your business, snaffle yourself a copy of How The Hell Do You Write A Book? Then check out the blog and podcast for more articles and guides. If you want a little (or a lot) more help, find out how you can work with me.
About Vicky...
Vicky Fraser is the founder of Moxie Books and author of How The Hell Do You Write A Book and Business For Superheroes. She helps business owners write life-changing books, connect with readers and new customers, and grow their businesses. When she's not doing that, she's hanging from a trapeze by her feet.
