Earlier this year I was lucky enough to have the chance to speak with a very successful businessman at the top of his niche, and I asked him, "Clearly you have a formula for success, what is it?"
He told me his secret. He said that every month they pull a name out of a bucket, and that person must then prepare a 20 minute presentation explaining why one of their COMPETITOR'S products is superior to their own, and how bad and defective their own product is. The person is forced to criticise and trash-talk the company's own product.
And then after the presentation, the people at the meeting prepare an action plan to solve all the deficiencies/problems that the person mentioned. And then over the course of the month they do it!
Furthermore, for each deficiency that the person finds and the group votes as being significant, the person receives a $100 bonus!
Another curious successful businessman I once met had a PA (personal assistant) who seemed to be frequently criticizing him and saying negative things about him -- to his face! I asked him, why don't you fire her?
He said, "That's part of her JOB. If she DOESN'T criticise me, then I will fire her!" Yes he actually had it written in her job contract that she must criticise him regularly.
When I had asked him, "Why don't you fire her?", that was shortly after she had delivered a fairly devastating criticism that shocked me a little bit. She said it, I was somewhat shocked, but he wasn't shocked at all, wasn't annoyed at her in the slightest bit, wasn't angry, didn't go crazy, didn't deny it, instead he just said "Well she's kinda half right, it would be better if I did something about that".
A month or so ago someone harshly criticized me about something. I didn't want to admit that his criticism was true. But I did admit to myself that it was true, and that made me a little bit depressed. Then I thought, "How can I fix this?"
And I pondered it, and then I worked on it for a while, and recently I solved it after less time than I had anticipated. And succeeding in solving it felt AWESOME, really awesome, a great feeling.
Whereas if I had deluded myself into thinking that his criticism was stupid, I would never have worked on fixing it, and that defect would have remained, I would have missed an opportunity to improve, and I would have also missed the awesome feeling of conquering the problem.
Clearly some people here feel very passionate, fanatical, and emotional about this project, and are consequently unable to read any constructive criticism and feedback about it without taking it personally and going bonkers-bananas.
But just remember, although I may say some negative things about this project at times, I AM ON YOUR SIDE.
I am not saying negative things to try to hurt the project, on the contrary I am saying negative things because I want to HELP the project improve.
And how do you make a project better and more successful? By being brave and confronting the negative things, and acknowledging them and SOLVING THEM instead of denying them.
There are dragons out there, working against you, limiting and damaging your success. Don't pretend they don't exist. Don't deny them. Don't say they don't matter. Don't run away from them.
Be BRAVE and acknowledge their existence, and then run up to them and SLAY THEM WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH!!!
That is how the most successful people become successful. They confirm the existence of their dragons, and they confirm that they are harmful, and then they deliver crushing blows until the dragons are defeated.
Whereas a weak or insecure person is scared and runs away from the dragons, and then tries to save face by claiming that the dragons don't exist or don't matter, despite the fact that the presence of the dragons is blatantly obvious to most of the people in other villages.