Residency Insight -- A PRESENT Podiatry eZine

Guest Editorial: Rem Jackson

Rem Jackson is the President and CEO of Top Practices, LLC, and the leader of the Top Practices Master Mind Group. Top Practices is a company dedicated to helping professionals and businesses reach their professional and personal goals by building their “perfect practice”. He can be reached at [email protected]. You can find out more about Top Practices at www.TopPractices.com.

—John Steinberg, DPM, PRESENT Editor

Nurturing Your Inner Six-Year-Old

by Rem Jackson
President and CEO of Top Practices, LLC

You talking to me? You talking to me? You talking to me?
— Robert Di Niro in "Taxi Driver"

In his iconic role in Taxi Driver, Bobby Di Niro (he lets his friends call him Bobby) looks into the mirror and asks his infamous question, all the while letting his mirror image know that he's got a gun and is quite prepared to use it. The message is "if you are talking to me like THAT, then you, my friend, are in really, really big trouble—nobody talks to me like that."

Who's talking trash to you? I mean the really nasty stuff—the ones that give you a psychological blow in your gut? Most likely it's not the people you work with. They are faaaaar too skilled to just openly beat you up. Most likely, not your family (very often), at least not directly. Those messages are usually symphonic productions of guilt layering , worthy of Mozart, and while effective, they aren't the really horrible stuff.

Nope. Only we can really take ourselves out to the woodshed and open up a really big can of trash talk. No one can just grind our souls into dust like we can do ourselves. We all are guilty of this and some of us are fantastically gifted in this category.

I'd like to ask you why. What did you do that was so bad that you deserve to be psychologically beaten? And make no mistake, that is what is happening—a steady drumbeat of abuse from the one person we can't get away from no matter how we try -ourselves.

I know all of this because I have more than my own share of self-inflicted scars and I've been like this most of my life. I'm a first born (strike one). I'm an over-achiever type (strike two). And I actually care what people think about me (strike three). I'm hopeless.

Well, not hopeless. Because I became aware of this a long time ago and I now refuse to treat myself badly. I even refuse to let others do it. I'm too busy thinking and growing rich in all parts of my life to allow any room in my mind or spirit for this kind of painful activity. I have literally spent as much time as I can bombarding my brain with positive books, CD's, Masterminds, friends, and music. I literally stop and smell as many roses as I can.

In the second part of this two part message, I will share the single most effective technique I know to help short circuit this self-destructive behavior and help you significantly accomplish your goals more quickly.

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