How can others mitigate my self-criticism?

I think it's something I've taken years to come to terms with is how you manage that within your own life. And that's even on a personal level, not just in a business setting is when you are self critical, you are constantly thinking about your decision, you're constantly thinking about every little thing you say or write and how you present yourself, how you present your work. And it does obviously take its toll on you. And often you, like you say, it presents challenges and that you might self sabotage and do things that you know actually were right, but you just started doubting yourself and criticising yourself. I think for that to help me overcome that, what really helps is surrounding yourself with people that are not that way, that are not as self critical that really do act a little bit more on their impulses, or will really believe in what they're doing.

And that’s on a personal level. My friends, my closest friends for example, are very much not like that, and they will be that sounding board when you are being self critical, they give you those nudges, give you those reminders and tell you that actually you're being crazy. Like, "No, this is fine." Like, "You didn't say anything wrong that or whatever." And in a business setting as well is having those people that aren't as self critical means that you, again, challenge you are challenged and they challenge you in a very different way and stretch you in a very different way, and that really helps. Actually, my brother and I, what we are similar in that respect is that we are both quite self critical. And I think he's actually a bit more self critical than I am

And it's that constant acknowledgement that we are both this way and we need to be aware of that so that when we communicate with each other, we need to bear that in mind, but importantly when we communicate to remainder of our team we need to ensure that we're not doubling down on being so self critical that it's almost defeating for everyone else. And that's why Thiago who's our tech lead and our first hire actually, he's very good at that actually. He's very good at saying, "No, I think this is great. Let's carry on and go do this." It's having that sounding board and acknowledging where your limitations are and where you are self-sabotaging so that you can bring those people into bring you back on track.