How to Deal with Criticism
Despite all of the perspective you
might have gained so far about why criticism can be a good thing and why it
always goes hand in hand with taking more risks and being a go-getter in life,
it still hurts. There are some strategies which can help you to deal with
criticism in a way where it doesn’t cause you to be completely overwhelmed or
make you give up on yourself or your projects.
Many people have come within only a
few steps of success, so close they could taste it, but they felt like the
criticism was too much and gave up on their dreams. If they had pushed forward
a little bit longer, weathered the storm a little bit more, they would’ve seen
that there was something wonderful on the other side.
If you can learn to deal with
criticism effectively, you can use it as a tool to take you to your success
instead of allowing it to derail you from getting to where you want to be in
life.
Don’t be defensive
Oftentimes, our perspective clouds
our judgment and we’re unable to see that the person was not trying to hurt us
at all by their criticism. They might have been giving us some information
because they wanted us to consider another angle of ourselves or of our
projects. You could be missing out on valuable, constructive information which
might help you to grow or be better at what you do.
It’s important not to be defensive
when criticism comes. Don’t immediately try and find excuses or try and turn it
around on the person criticizing you by finding fault with them as well.
Retaliation only turns it into a war instead of something constructive, which
it might have been intended as.
Sometimes, we hear feedback as
sounding too mean or sounding condescending, and we might have an emotional
reaction because our ego is hurt. We ignore the words and all we hear is the
tone. This is a way of blocking the channels of communication and of missing a
potentially valuable message.
What you should do when you receive
criticism, or when you just feel criticized, is to try and firstly give the
person the benefit of the doubt. Always imagine at first that they are saying
it because they genuinely want to help you. This might not always be the case,
but often it is, and we simply react emotionally when it’s unwarranted.
Try to hear if there is an honest,
valuable message you could be getting from the criticism. Hear it for what it
is, and tune out the feelings of embarrassment, inferiority or disappointment
which you might be feeling initially. If there’s really something in there, and
if kind, sincere criticism is being offered, always remember to say thank you.
The person has helped you to be better, and when you’re successful one day,
they played a small part in it. Tell the person that you appreciate the fact
that they want to help you and you recognize it as a way that they are showing
you how much they care about your success.
If there’s really nothing
constructive to be gained from the criticism, move on to some of the next steps
instead in order to ignore the person or tell them they’re not helping you at
all.
Confront the person about how you understood what they said
It might be useful for you to tell
the person how their criticism comes across. If it is not helpful to you, and
if it feels overly hurtful or mean-spirited, tell them that their words might
not have had the effect that they were aiming for. If they’ll listen to you,
explain to them why the message was poorly received.
In the case of feedback from your
supervisor, you might explain to them that you’ve received the criticism as too
harsh for it to be constructive. You might just prompt them to change their
approach and look at the types of comments they’re giving you. If the problem
is truly with the style of feedback, this might help to improve your
relationship with your supervisor, especially if they’re unaware that they can
be brutal with their criticism.
Most people who are only out to
hurt you won’t want to listen to this, or might laugh it off. That’s a good
sign to steer clear of that person in future, because being around them doesn’t
benefit you at all and they’re not hanging out with you in order to make your
life better. But other people might be genuinely surprised that their words
hurt you, and you might be offering them a way to be better communicators as
well.
Be your own cheerleader
Having low self-esteem can be a
major factor in why criticism hurts some more than others. If you don’t really
believe in yourself and know your own worth, it will be easy for other people
to tear you down and make you feel worthless.
No one else will believe in you or
believe in the things you do if you don’t show them that you already have
confidence. It will be a lot harder to convince someone to invest in your new
design project if it’s obvious that you don’t really believe in your ability to
complete it. It will be tough to get people to support you if you give them the
impression that you’re not very good at what you do.
There are some detailed resources
for building confidence and gaining motivation at the Academic Coaching
website. For now, let’s look at some areas you could work on.
You need to become your own biggest
supporter before you can expect the support of others. Be who you are and do
what you do with confidence. That way it’s easier for others to be confident in
you too.
This confidence comes with
accepting yourself just as you are, with all of your flaws. When you can say,
“I’m not the best at singing, but it doesn’t matter because I love doing it
anyway,” no one can take that away from you with their criticism.
Confidence can be strengthened with
affirmations. You can remind yourself about the good things in your life. You
can do this by displaying your awards, diplomas, trophies or certificates on a
wall or a display case, or putting pictures up of yourself where you really
think you look and feel your best. These reminders will give you visual proof
of how awesome you are. If you’ve done great things and been a successful
person before, those accomplishments will stay with you forever. You can
remember that you are that same person right now as the person who achieved
those things in the past, and you can do even more amazing things in your future
as you continue to grow and learn in life.
Boosting your confidence could
include putting up a positive quote on the wall in your kitchen or bedroom
where you’ll see it every day. You could design your own quote that makes you
feel good and motivated, and that reminds you that you have limitless potential
despite your challenges in life. You could also try and find a quote that helps
you to steel yourself against criticism. A good place to start is the excellent
quote by Theodore Roosevelt from his speech delivered at the Sorbonne in Paris
in 1910. The excerpt is referred to as “The Man in the Arena”. It can remind
you that critics will always be around but they shouldn’t stop you from doing
great things with your life:
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who
points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have
done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena,
whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who
errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error
and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great
enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at
the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the
worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place
shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor
defeat.”
Remind yourself often that you’re
worthy of success, and give yourself the praise for being daring and brave
enough to go after your dreams. The more you start to believe it yourself, the
more you’ll radiate success and other people will believe it too. It’ll be
easier to take actions that bring you closer to success when you already
believe that you’re good enough to get there. No amount of criticism can bring
you down if you know your own worth.
Focus on what you can learn from the moment
If you’ve been criticized, it’s
easy sometimes to make excuses for why you made the mistake that you made, or
to try and find all sorts of reasons why the person might have offered their
criticism. Maybe the weather was bad and it made your friend moody, so they
found fault with your singing technique. Maybe you’d just had a late night or
had not warmed up your voice enough. There are lots of reasons why the
criticism might be misguided or might not be useful to you. These excuses might
be valid, but if you rely on them every time you’re being criticized, you’ll definitely
be missing some valuable feedback.
If the criticism really is valid,
you should be able to look past your feelings and try and learn something from
it.
Of course, this is not as easy as
it sounds. How do you simply ignore the fact that it feels like someone punched
you in the gut?
A good strategy is to take it
slowly before you react to the criticism. Give your brain and your body some
time to process what is happening. Take a beat and take a deep breath. You
might feel strange if there is a sudden silence while you collect your
thoughts. You might not want the person who criticized you to know that they
hurt you, and the deep breath might be giving it away. But it’s better to react
consciously than to just react instinctively. Rather than retaliate, take a
second to be in the moment, to be hurt, and then to try and look past it at
what the person is actually trying to say to you.
This way, you won’t retaliate when
it’s not necessary to do so. You won’t dismiss the advice or information which
someone is offering you simply because it hurt to hear it.
The best way to deal with an
emotional reaction is to really be conscious and aware of the emotion. Think to
yourself, “I’ve been hurt by that criticism. It hurts to hear what this person
just said to me, because it makes me feel embarrassed. But is there anything I
can gain from their message?”
If you can’t immediately move past
your emotional reaction in order to respond to your critic, you can just tell
him or her: “I’ll have to think about what you said. I’m not really sure how I
can use your feedback just yet to improve myself or improve my work. Once I’ve
thought about it a bit more, I’ll tell you what I think.”
Even by saying this, you’re not
immediately being defensive or dismissive, but rather giving yourself time to
work through your emotions and then respond to the criticism. That way, you can
evaluate whether you should really be listening to it at all.
Ignore false criticism
You can usually tell when criticism
is false. When you know that the person criticizing you has no real investment
in seeing you improve, and might enjoy it if you gave up, you can be pretty
sure that the criticism is not meant to help you. If they say something that
doesn’t reflect the reality of the situation at all, it’s not worth listening
to them. If they’re criticizing you only to put you down or to make themselves
feel better, they’re not contributing to your life in a positive way.
The best thing to do in the face of
such criticism is to ignore it completely. Just remind yourself: “listening to
this person right now will not improve my life at all, and will only bring me
down.” Then do your best to dust it off and move as far away from that person
as possible.
You do need to remember, again,
that you shouldn’t use your emotions to measure whether or not to listen to
criticism. Sometimes the truth hurts much more than a lie. Try and see whether
the criticism is really false, and if so, ignore it.
You also shouldn’t listen to
criticism about things you can’t control. If someone criticizes something about
your body, your mannerisms or your race, sexuality or gender, their words have
nothing to do with you and rather with their own prejudices or insecurities.
Even though these words might hurt a lot, you need to find ways to love these
parts of yourself and not allow the issues of someone else to make you feel
like less of a person. Try and find positive role models who are similar to
you. If you have big ears that you’re embarrassed of, find a great person who
is living their dreams who also has big ears. Notice that they didn’t let their
ears hold them back from being who they are and doing what they love. This is a
silly example, but you should try and apply the principle to anything that you
might not be fully comfortable with about yourself.
None of these factors ultimately
determine who you are. If it’s something you can’t control, you should ignore
any criticism of it or comments about it. If the situation calls for it and it
feels appropriate, call the person out on their meanness or prejudices. Tell
them that you love that particular part of yourself and that it is a valuable
and important part of who you are. If it’s not the right time to do that,
simply walk away and remember what you’re really worth.
Only listen to respectful criticism
It’s just not worth it listening to
or engaging with someone who is deliberately trying to hurt you or bring you
down. You deserve to get the same respect that you show to others, so when
someone disrespects you, demand their respect before you engage with them any
further, or just walk away. You don’t have to waste your time on negative
people.
The people that you surround
yourself with will greatly impact on the person you will become. If you
constantly allow people to tear you down, you are very unlikely to succeed. If
you keep these people around and let them disrespect you constantly, you’ll be
showing yourself disrespect as well. Your self-worth will plummet and you won’t
have any confidence that you can do great things with your life. Disrespectful
people are simply not worth keeping around.
A good measure of this is how you
feel in someone’s company. If you feel uncomfortable, unhappy, judged, small
and pathetic around them all the time, they’re probably not showing you the
respect you deserve. If you feel like it’s impossible to please someone, it
usually is – they’ll never be satisfied with anything you do, so why even try?
However, if you have someone in
your life who really respects you and who values you, and criticizes you
because they want to see good things in your life, this is the kind of person
you need to be listening to and keeping around. These people will help you to
really know where you’re making mistakes, but will still celebrate your
victories with you as well. These people bring positivity into your life, and
they’re willing to criticize you out of a genuine desire to see you grow. If
you don’t already have people like this in your life, go out and meet some. You
could try any kinds of hobby groups – these people are usually trying to
constantly improve themselves, so they’ll be attracted to places where they can
do this. Hiking, art, writing, personal growth and leadership groups would be
good places to start looking.
Whenever you feel disrespected by
some criticism you receive, you could tell that person that what they said felt
very disrespectful, give them the reasons why, and tell them that you’re much
more likely to listen to them if they treat you with respect. Often, this will
show these people that you’re not willing to be treated like garbage, and
either they’ll start treating you better or find a new target to disrespect.
Journal about it
If you’ve really been hurt by a
piece of criticism, it might be a good starting point to question yourself
about why it hurt you so much. The best way I’ve found of doing this is to
journal about the experience.
Journaling can be very cathartic,
allowing you to put all of the emotions onto a piece of paper and get the
negative energy moving instead of simply keeping it inside. Lots of people
immediately feel a sense of relief after writing about an experience. Even
though it still stings, you can start to really process those emotions when you
write them down.
Some people even find value in
writing a letter to the person who has hurt them, explaining exactly why the
experience was hurtful. Whether you deliver this letter or not, the process of
writing will give you a sense of clarity and some emotional relief.
Journaling can also give you the
chance to gain some perspective – when you actually take the time to write
something down, you can see that maybe it was not quite as deliberately hurtful
as you imagined it to be. You might be able to see that the person was actually
offering you valuable criticism.
Journaling is a good habit to
maintain if you need more clarity on your emotions. It can help you to reflect
on your life and get to know yourself better. When you feel criticized,
journaling might be a good way to diffuse your own anger or frustration.
Gain some perspective
When you’re hurt, it’s often hard
to see the moment in perspective. It was just one person’s opinion. It doesn’t
mean that you’re really a bad person, or that what you’re doing is terrible or
not worthwhile. You need to try and see the incident in perspective in order to
realize that it really doesn’t matter all that much in the grander scheme of
things. This isn’t meant to diminish your feelings – your feelings are valid
and you should be allowed to have them and process them. But gaining
perspective will help you to stick to what you need to be doing despite the
momentary pain you might be experiencing.
You are bigger than a particular
emotional reaction, and the work you are here to do is bigger than what one
person thinks of it. If you let someone make you feel so bad over one comment,
you’ll have many more struggles when you take on even more in your life and the
criticism comes more frequently and more aggressively.
Of course, this doesn’t count when
someone routinely and persistently criticizes you and brings you down. This is a big deal, and you need to take some
actions to stop this person from making you feel the way they make you feel.
But for the everyday criticism you
encounter, remember that it won’t really matter when all’s said and done.
You’re doing what you love, you’re going after your goals, and if other people
have a problem with that, there’s nothing you can do to change that. See it as
just another small bump on your road to success. Chances are, in a few weeks,
you’ll hardly even remember the moment of criticism, and the pain will
disappear. Your life is much bigger than the nasty words of one person.
If you keep getting the same message over and over, it’s a sign to do something different
You might find yourself saying,
“People just don’t understand what I’m trying to do, and that’s why they’re
criticizing me”. Well, if almost everyone doesn’t understand what you’re trying
to do, maybe you should change the way you’re doing it so that people can sign
on. Maybe you should make your message or your work a bit more accessible so
that others can really invest in it and believe in it the way you do.
It doesn’t make you a sellout to
listen to some feedback once in a while. Remember that the work you’re doing
also affects other people, and in order to make it really have a positive
impact on their lives, you need to listen to what they’re saying.
If the criticism is about something
you can control, and it’s about a project that you’d like to see other people
get excited about as well, then listen to how you can make it work for them.
This is one of the best ways to have a greater reach with any project you
undertake. Being open to feedback and realizing you’ve made a mistake will
allow you to not only build stronger bonds with people by showing that you’re
really listening to them, but also allow you to improve on yourself and the
work you do.
This is not to say that you should
give up your integrity. Sometimes the greatest accomplishments were very
strange to the world at first. Some of the greatest thinkers were persecuted
for their ideas, not because the ideas were bad or wrong, but just because they
made people uncomfortable. Galileo was sentence to life in prison for claiming
that the Earth was not the center of the Universe and instead revolved around
the Sun. If he had balked and given up on his work, where would science be
today?
Maintain your integrity, but also
listen to the messages that are repeatedly coming from other people. Experiment
and don’t be too sacred or precious about keeping things exactly the way they
are. Sometimes a small adjustment is enough to really take you to the next
level.
Have a good shouting and crying session
No matter how much we rationalize
the criticism and understand what it means, it still sucks.
Sometimes the best thing you can do
is to give in to the feelings you’re feeling. You might be sad that someone
said something mean or judgmental to you. You might be disappointed that things
did not work out the way you wanted. You might be embarrassed that your project
had flaws and someone pointed it out to you. Or you might be even more insecure
and feel like you were silly to even try to do something in the first place.
All of these feelings are valid,
and you should allow yourself to feel them. But don’t let them distract you
from doing what you want to do and being who you are.
You could have a good, cathartic
crying session, and just feel miserable for a while. You could buy yourself a
tub of ice-cream after you read a one-star review of your book. You could push
your face into a pillow and just shout for a while. Do whatever you need to do
to acknowledge your feelings in the moment.
This could help you to feel a lot
better a lot sooner. If you really allow yourself to feel everything that
you’re feeling, you could process the feelings much better and then be ready to
get back on the horse. If you simply tried to ignore the feelings, they might
still be lingering beneath the surface and catch up with you eventually if
you’re ever criticized again. Not acknowledging your feelings of pain or
disappointment could lead you to never gain real confidence in your abilities
or stand up for yourself if someone is bullying you. Be honest with yourself
about how you’re feeling, and allow yourself to feel it for a while.
Then, when you’re ready, get back
on the horse. Go back to square one and continue doing what you do and being
who you are. Sometimes, success comes after only a few months of struggle and
failure, but for most of us, it will take years of perseverance in the face of
a lot of criticism. Feel bad about the criticism for a short while, but then
keep on going. You’ll be grateful that you did in the long run.