☮️ Dealing With Criticism Is Very Important In Life
Dealing with criticism positively is an important life skill. At some point in anybody’s life, one will be criticised, perhaps in one’s personal life or in their professional way. Sometimes it won’t be easy to accept, but your reaction is what matters the most. You can either use criticism positively to improve or in a negative way that can lower your self-esteem and cause stress and anger.
The habit of embracing criticism is the stepping stone to success.
If you look at the most outstanding leaders of all time or the most incredible change-makers of all time, they have one thing in common, which is their ability to take and act upon that criticism.
Infact, Elon musk was once asked in an interview what’s the most difficult thing in his life and considering the fact that he is already doing crazy things like colonising mars, reusable rockets, OpenAI, NeuraLink, we would expect something related to that, but in contrast he replied by saying, “One of the biggest challenges in life is making sure you have a corrective feedback loop and maintaining the feedback loop even when people won’t tell you exactly want you want to hear”. Now comes the question, why is this habit so essential and more importantly, how can ordinary people like you and me take criticism adequately.
Why do we need to embrace criticism?
A perfect example could be of the year 1846 in Europe, one of the darkest times in European history because of the disease that had evolved back in the day: Black Death of childbed, in which as soon as mothers gave birth to children, they used to die of ‘puerperal fever’, there was a consistent increase in the death of mothers, even after millions of dollars and a considerable amount of research, no one could understand; amidst this chaos, there was one person by the name: Dr Ignaz Semmelweis, openly criticised the doctors and was screaming out the solution in every possible way, but no-one listened to him, especially the doctors, and called him crazy for decades. One fine day after several years, the doctors had tried out his solution and ‘puerperal fever’ vanished. The solution was a three-word answer, “Wash Your Hands”. As it turns out, the doctors were performing the deliveries in the afternoon after doing the autopsies in the morning, which is why the disease got passed on from the dead bodies into healthy mothers. All they had to do was wash their hands and instruments with chlorine, and one of the deadliest diseases just vanished. Today Dr Ignaz is regarded as ‘The Saviour Of Mothers”, but all those years when doctors were too proud to admit their flaws, and just because of their futile ego, many children in that age grew up without a mother. This is the reason why feedback and criticism are vital.
Criticism is a double-edged sword; if taken the right way, can lead to greatness, and if not taken the right way, it will become the graveyard of your success.
How do you exactly embrace criticism?
In this world, there are only a few well-wishers, and on the other side, there are these dedicated haters who will go out of their way to pull you down. So how does one filter the feedback that matters?
The answer to this question comes from the book: The Culture Code, which devices a method that is very famously known as “The magical Feedback Method”, in which you ask three questions to your critic for getting constructive feedback:
1. What do you think I did right?
2. What do you think I did wrong?
3. If you would have done it, how would you make it better?
Once you get all these answers, its time to jot them done and work upon them. Now, the main question is how do you know whom to listen to and who not to.
4 broad categories of people who will criticise you
1. Absolute Haters:
Do not take them seriously, and if you do, it will mess up with your mental health, so the best solution is to block them both from your life and social media. It isn’t as easy as it sounds but that is the only solution.
How to deal with negative people and non-constructive feedback?
When Sadhguru was asked in an interview about how he deals with hostile baseless critics, he answered by saying that you don’t need another person’s opinion if you know what you are doing. It would be best if you believe in yourself, and in fact, most of the good things that happened on this planet have always got bad press and was often only appreciated after the result. One shouldn’t do something because of appreciation or fear of criticism, but we should do what truly matters to us and makes us feel happy.
Somebody else’s opinion matters only when you don’t know what you are doing, by Jagadish Vasudev, venerated as Sadhguru.
He adds on by saying, “If you throw flowers at me, it won’t mean a damn thing to me, and the same way if you throw stones at me, it still won’t mean a damn thing to me, because I am 100% clear of what I am doing. Maybe the critics will take time to evolve and understand, but I know what I am doing, and I am doing it this way because this is my way”.
There is a story which my grandmother had told me when I was a kid: One day, a guru and his disciple were sitting under a tree near a river, and the guru goes to the river to wash his face and sees a scorpion in the river, struggling to swim. Having witnessed this incident, the guru takes the scorpion into his hands, gets it out of the river, and puts it down. During this process, the scorpion had stung him thrice. The disciple then asked the guru why he has done this, and the guru answers by saying the scorpion is doing what it knows best. I am doing what I know best. The moral being that, if you are trained to be a doctor, you do your best, even if somebody says something, it shouldn’t matter to you, some people will live, some will die, the question is, are you doing your best.
In our lives, if we didn’t do what we can’t do, it’s not a problem, but if we didn’t do what we could have done, then we are a disaster, by Sadhguru.
2. Innocent Critics :
These type of people love you a lot but sometimes can give you baseless critics, for example your parents. Their advice is for our well being but their intent is never evil, like pushing us to take a safe career.
3. Sweet Talkers:
The comes the third category of critics and these are the ones you stay aware of, thse type of people will praise you so much that you will knowingly or unknowingly incline towards them to get their validation. Solution? Well, listen to the sweet talkers but do not ever take them seriously.
4. Constructive Critics
By far the most important peopl in your life, they love you a lot and give you constructive criticism, which might sound very harsh in the beginning, but it is very important, never leave these people, because you won’t get people like these very easily so tightly hold on to the ones you have.
Every time it gets diff to gulp down harsh feedback, remember:
Criticism is that one stone which people will throw at you all the time, but it is you who needs to decide whether to build a castle of your greatness or the graveyard of your success.
