Criticism.
It can be a real pain in the ass to receive it and I know that for a fact. I spent most of my life beating myself for receiving any kind of criticism. I grew up almost in military raising environment, where there was zero tolerance for any kind of mistake. When you are raised in this kind of enviroment, you are trying to avoid the mistakes for any price. And when you slip just for a second, you find yourself at the edge of surviving. You literary don’t know if your family is about to abandon you and throw you away for the lions or they are simply just going to kill you by themselves. As stated before, growing up in this kind of family, makes you feel that any criticism means that you are worthless piece of something and your reaction to even constructive criticism can be very aggressive.
But, then you suddenly grow up. And if you are lucky, you see your peers or friends how they deal with receiving criticism in most graceful way and without feeling that their family is about to execute them. You try to grasp that. Not an easy job to do. You don’t really understand how this scenario is even survivable. But, diving a bit deeper, you understand that they probably had someone in their family standing behind them and make them feel loved, despite of their mistakes. Hard realisation. Hard, because if you never had this kind of backup, you really need some time to process it. But when you do, the whole new world reveals.
Learning how to accept and process criticism holds great importance for all involved parties, not just for one side. Both sides needs to have the right intentions, the side receiving criticism needs to be open to hear out the side giving the criticism and the side giving criticism, must come from a place with honest intentions for improvement or to inspire change. Here it is important to mention, that we should be able to distinguish between constructive criticism and judgement, insulting or simply bullying. Remember no one has the right to judge, insult or to bully you and when you come across of this kind of behaviour, just turn around and don’t enable them to continue. Just walk away!
For a case when you are receiving constructive criticism, here are 3 main reasons why receiving constructive criticism is a good thing:
1 – It opens a new perspective
Good constructive criticism will help you to understand things from different perspective, not only from yours. This will definitely raise your awareness, which will more likely result in better outcome of any kind.
2 – It helps you to improve
Many times we can see things very clearly from our angle. Understanding different point of view will help you to improve your weak points, you perhaps didn’t even knew they existed.
3 – It helps you to understand yourself and others
The way how you receive criticism tells a lot about you. If you receive genuine constructive criticism and you are responding in negative manner, then the chances that you have some unresolved issues within yourself are pretty high. I’d recommend sitting down with yourself and working on that first by:
- Understanding why you are acting the way you are, when the other side is trying to help and to encourage improvement
- Investigate within yourself what is your sense of your own value as a person
- Try to understand from where your doubts about received feedback is coming from
The way how you receive criticism will help you to understand your defence mechanisms, their background and places for the improvement.
In addition, receiving constructive criticism will also help you to understand others better, their perspectives, angles or point of views and even maybe some good practices for giving constructive criticism.
With all that said, next time when you receive a criticism:
- leave all you emotions aside,
- listen to the facts
- understand different perspectives
- be grateful that someone cares about your improvement
- thank the critic
- work on improvement
“Criticism is something we can avoid easily by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.”
– Aristotle
