Nothing you do will ever be good enough.

There will always be critics. There will always be detractors. Someone will always be disappointed in you, angry with you, belittling everything you’ve accomplished.

Mahatma Gandhi was one of the greatest men who ever lived. He had a lot of critics during his lifetime, constant opposition to what he was trying to accomplish. He embodied truth, love and non-violence, and was assassinated for his troubles.

Martin Luther King is a similar story. Same with that dude named Jesus from way back.

Today, you can look to the sports world for easy examples. While Michael Phelps was busy performing unprecedented Olympic feats in 2008, internet trolls were busy criticizing his diet. He should be eating wholewheat bread instead of white bread? Really? I think the white bread worked just fine.

Kobe Bryant reinvented himself as a team player to win the last two NBA championships. People hate that guy. Lance Armstrong dominated the sport of cycling after beating cancer, yet the head of the Tour de France said Armstrong was embarrassing the tour when he returned from a four-year absence in 2009.

So if the best people in the history of the world and today’s top sports stars can’t please everyone, there’s not much hope for you and me.

But I see this as a good thing

Here’s why: Since nothing we do will ever be good enough for everyone, we can view criticism as inevitable and just roll with it rather than letting it get us down. As long as you feel you’re giving your best to the world and living your values, that’s all the validation you need.

So keep your head up, brush off that criticism, and rock on with your legendary self.

Whenever John meets someone inspiring, someone who seems to be living life to the fullest and enjoying the journey, he asks that person, “Who do you listen to?”

John wants to know what ideas such people fill their heads with. Who are their mentors? Who are they inspired by? What kind of books do they read? What thoughts do they allow themselves to think, and which ones do they banish? What are the inputs that produce those outputs?

These are also good questions to ask yourself.

Who do you listen to? Who’s filling your head with ideas? Who’s influencing your thoughts and actions?

Are those people serving you well? Do they build you up or tear you down? Do they help you reach your potential or are they keeping you stuck? Are they all about possibilities or are they all about limitations?

If you’re not living the life you want, here’s what you do: identify some people who are living the life you want. Reach out to them and ask who they listen to. Then, stop listening to everyone else, and listen only to them.

Who do I listen to?

As I wrote last week, my big hairy audacious goal is to start my own business at the end of the year. This business will allow me to work less hours than I currently do while making more money and delivering more value to the world. And within a few months of getting started, I’ll be in a position where I can pick up and move to a foreign country at a moment’s notice, working as I travel without missing a beat.

To ensure I achieve this goal, I’m being very selective with the people I choose to listen to. My general rule: I only listen to people who have done specifically what I am trying to do, or at least some specific part of what I am trying to do.

To date, I’ve identified several such people. Below are some big ones, listed alphabetically:

Glen Allsopp

Glen is still in his early 20′s but already an expert at viral marketing and search engine optimization (i.e. generating lots of web traffic). He takes websites from zero to win in record speed and tells how you, too, can generate a boatload of passive income online.

Everett Bogue

Everett blogs about minimalism at Far Beyond The Stars. Through embracing a minimalist lifestyle, he was able to quit his day job in 2009 and is now earning more money than ever via his writing. He owns just 50 things, giving him the freedom to migrate across the country whenever he feels like it.

Mahatma Gandhi

Gandhi might seem like an odd choice here, sandwiched between young, computer-savvy entrepreneurs and heavy hitters from the business world. But I can think of no better role model for speaking your mind, striving for improvement and standing up for what you believe in than the Mahatma. He was truth and courage personified. For the last few weeks I’ve been reading and summarizing The Essential Gandhi for twenty minutes each morning. Powerful way to start the day.

Seth Godin

Seth is a master marketer and entrepreneur, one of those guys who can spot the next big thing before it’s even a thing. He encourages people to question the status quo, to be bold, to lead. I’m currently reading and loving his book, Tribes. He also blogs regularly.

Tim Ferriss

I first read Tim’s book The 4-Hour Work Week almost two years ago, and that planted the seed of entrepreneurship in me that is now starting to sprout. He’s undoubtedly been a big influence on some other people on this list, too.

Bob Proctor

Right now I’m in the middle of a ten-week group study of Bob’s classic book, You Were Born Rich. Through that material I can feel myself developing a more abundant mindset in relation to money, and deepening my understanding of what it will take to meet my financial goals.

Colin Wright

Colin blogs about lifestyle design and his countless adventures at Exile Lifestyle. He is a man of many interests, a master networker (both online and in-person) and he moves himself and his minimalist business to a new country every four months.

Those are just a few of my guides on this journey I’m undertaking. You can find some more via my following list on Twitter.

What about you? I’d love to know who you listen to, and how those people help you achieve your lofty goals.

I didn’t think that was such a good idea. In my view, having an attitude like that hurts only you.

To illustrate my point, let’s take Steve Pavlina, one of those three people who inspire me. Steve believes in and sometimes writes about psychic phenomena and the paranormal. For example, about eighteen months ago he wrote about the spirit of a dead friend helping him win at blackjack. My reaction to that article was probably similar to the reaction of most people: “Man, this guy’s crazy.” However, I wasn’t about to let that one disagreement stop me from reading and appreciating other articles on Steve’s site. Instead, I just filed it away in the “Things I don’t necessarily agree with” part of my brain, and continued on. Good thing, too, because I’ve since received many valuable insights from other articles Steve has written.

It takes effort

Writing people completely off because you disagree with something they say is nothing short of laziness. When you do that, you’re effectively saying, “I couldn’t be bothered getting to know this person completely, so I’ll just make a sweeping judgment about them based on the few things I do know.” Granted, nobody has the time or the capacity to truly know everyone they come into contact with, but we can be conscious of those snap judgments we make about others and how we may deprive ourselves of important lessons because of them.

Nobody’s perfect

It’s important to realize that nobody is perfect. If you’re holding out for an infallible mentor to show you the light, you’re in for a long wait. Consider these brief descriptions of two famous historical figures:

1. The first man was a charismatic leader and a decorated war hero. He preferred a vegetarian diet, never smoked, rarely drank alcohol and was faithful to his wife.
2. The second man died without a penny to his name. He regularly defied laws and was imprisoned many times. He often appeared indifferent towards his family and had an especially strained relationship with his son.

The first man is Adolf Hitler. The second is Mahatma Gandhi. Obviously the above descriptions are extremely selective, but they go to show that even the best of people have their flaws while the worst have their redeeming qualities. I like to believe we can learn valuable lessons from both these men — even, in the case of Hitler, if those lessons are mostly of the “what not to do” variety — and from everybody who falls between them in the spectrum of good and evil.

The Bible

Not so long ago, if you had quoted a bible verse at me, I would have considered you a brainwashed lunatic who could never teach me anything worth knowing. Then I came to this realization that everybody and everything has at least some truth. Gradually I came to see that the bible was no different. Sure, it calls homosexuality an abomination (Leviticus 20:13) and encourages you to burn witches (Exodus 22:18), but it also contains great lessons about love, truth and self-discipline.

As A.J. Jacobs concluded in The Year of Living Biblically, it’s impossible and often immoral to follow every word of the bible, but the book can indeed enhance your life if you focus on the right parts and live by the lessons contained in them. You just have to persevere through many inconsistencies and a bunch of stuff you’ll probably disagree with. You must use that mind you’ve been blessed with to separate the wheat from the chaff and arrive at your own truth.

Against the grain

If you tend to focus on the negative rather than the positive, don’t worry, you’re not alone. As humans, we’re predisposed to give more attention to the bad things in life. It’s a survival instinct. Scientists have proven that something we perceive as bad will have a stronger and more lasting affect on our brains than something we perceive as good (see author David Rock talk about it from the 20-minute mark of this YouTube video). That’s why you can thoroughly enjoy the first ninety minutes of a movie, only to have the whole experience ruined by an implausible ending. Somehow those last few minutes negate the previous ninety and you come away disappointed.

Again, it takes effort to focus on the good rather than the bad, but that effort is worth undertaking, because there’s no growth if you choose the lazy way out. With laziness you limit yourself to seeing problems instead of opportunities.

Learning from everyone

You don’t have to agree with everything someone says or does to learn from them. In fact, I’d argue that you learn the least from the people you agree with the most. Think about it: how much can someone really teach you if you’re already nodding your head in agreement before they finish a sentence?