As you live an authentic lifestyle you will likely face criticism at some point. Not everyone will approve of your choices and some people may be critical of your efforts. Criticism can come in many forms and can be aggressive and direct or polite and subtle. For instance, the summer after I graduated high school, a peer of mine exclaimed that I would never travel. He knew my dreams at the time were to see the world. However, at this point I had never worked at any job. I wasn’t yet in college and basically I had not demonstrated that I was capable of independently working towards a life where I would be able to travel. However, as I begin juggling several jobs in college, maintaining good grades in college and pursuing other interests, my peer continued to tell me that I would not be able to travel and had all sorts of unnecessary criticism to back this up. His criticism was based on the fact that he did not feel I was independent enough to follow through on my dreams for travelling.
Criticism may be more subtle as well. You are starting a new business venture and your friends try to dictate how you should go about running your business. Suddenly your ideas aren’t that good, aren’t researched out and you are already making mistakes before you have even started. What seems like an honest effort to help, may be a subtle way of critiquing how you intend to handle something.
Jealousy is another form of criticism. Your friends blame your recent promotion on luck. According to your friends, you didn’t earn the promotion due to hard work and your skill set, but mainly because you got lucky. Some people in your life might take you down. When you bring up how amazing your children are doing at school, a jealous friend may remind you about your bad divorce or the fact that you dislike your job. Basically jealousy allows someone to ignore all the positive things happening in your life and focus on the negative.
Criticism however can be very helpful as well. Usually criticism is given with the intention to be constructive towards the receiver. For instance, a friend might have justifiable concerns about a friend travelling around the world if they are unable to be financially responsible. Constructive feedback might involve letting that person know that they may need to prioritize their own savings before embarking on an expensive trip. People in your life may have excellent knowledge and skills to be able to give you well-informed advice for running a business.
Regardless, of whether the criticism is useful to you, learning how to handle criticism will allow you to effectively manage your relationships with people while acknowledging the criticism.
1. Listen and then choose to accept or ignore the criticism. Not all criticism is bad. You will often not know the right decisions to make straight away and it is possible that you are not approaching a situation correctly. Take a deep breath and listen to the criticism. Does it makes sense? Is the criticism something helpful you can use? Are you being authentic to yourself by listening to critics? Make the choice to take on constructive criticism or toss it. If someone tells you something that makes sense, then consider that to be constructive criticism that you can use to improve your lifestyle. However, if the criticism is not constructive or does not fit the vision you have for your life, then ignore it.
2. Respond kindly. Our first instinct may be to respond aggressively to criticism. It doesn’t usually feel good to hear harsh feedback about a project we’ve spend time on or about a choice that we’ve put plenty of thought into. Take a deep breath and say thank you for the advice or feedback. Usually criticism comes from a place of love or genuinely wanting to help. For instance one of the most difficult things to do as a writer is to submit your manuscript in progress and ask someone to give feedback. You have likely spent months, even years working on this manuscript. Sometimes the feedback isn’t pleasant or can shoot down an idea that you think is amazing. However, this feedback is given to help you, not hurt you. The same goes at work as well. An annual performance review that doesn’t go so great can hurt. The feedback may not be want you want to hear at the time or even something you believe but it is coming from a place of seeing how you can improve and not to cut you down. There are cases, however, where criticism is meant to draw out negative emotions within you and the feedback is unnecessary and disrespectful. Regardless of your initial emotions, respond with kindness. Thank the person for their words and walk away. Fighting their negativity with your negativity will only come across as petty and will just create more negative feelings. Nothing good can come from responding with hostility towards criticism.
3. Stand your ground. There are times where saying thank you and walking away won’t stop the critics. If someone continues to give you criticism and you don’t have the option to walk away, then simply stand your ground on your beliefs. For instance, maybe your parents are constantly criticising your decision to not go to college and how you want to focus on your career in music instead. Cutting your parents out of your life, ignoring them and hoping they will stop, will not help the situation. Stand your ground on what you believe and be firm in your decisions. Give them some good arguments and justifications for why you are living your life in such a way. You might consider telling your parents that you plan to enrol in part-time night classes if things aren’t working out in a year, list the recent accomplishments you’ve had in your career, invite them to shows so that they can see your progress and how important this is to you or you might tell them enrolling in a college and not knowing what you want out of it is a waste of time and money. Regardless, you have an argument for your choices and you stick to those arguments. Your loved ones will likely not agree with your decision and they may never agree with it, but by you sticking to what you feel is right, you’ll show them that your decision is firm and that they will have to deal with it. This is your life, not theirs.
4. Cut off critics. Typically critics don’t have to be cut off. A parent who is concerned for me and offers feedback that I don’t necessarily need or want to hear doesn’t need to be cut out. Peers who give feedback to my work don’t need to be cut out. A manager who always seems to criticise me doesn’t necessarily need to be cut out of my life. However, there are people who are too critical. These people are toxic and need to be cut out of your life. These people are usually jealous, have rarely anything good to say about you, are always looking for something to criticize and basically you feel like there’s no real good reason to allow this person in your life anymore. Sometimes the best way to handle people who are too critical is to just cut them out of your life and move on.
5. Learn from criticism. As mentioned earlier, criticism may actually be helpful to you. Through criticism you might learn that your story needs some improvement, re-assess if it is wise to quit your job right now or rethink visiting a city or country that is not particularly safe at the moment. Even when criticism isn’t right for you at this time, you can still learn from criticism. Some of my best learnings from dealing with critics is how to respond well to it. Hearing harsh criticism hurts but learning how to deal with it has allowed me to not take criticism so personally and stay firm in my beliefs. You might also realize that criticism may be hurtful because of unresolved issues. For instance, hearing criticism from a parent may hurt you quite a bit due to you holding onto unresolved issues with this specific parent. Even when you don’t feel criticism is right for you, questioning yourself can be a useful tool. I believe that many of us have options to achieving our life goals. Hearing what someone has to say and questioning your method may make you realize that there’s a better way of doing things or may prevent you from making the wrong choice. Overall, criticism usually helps us progress and grow. Even if you don’t agree with the criticism, allow yourself the opportunity to learn from the experience.
6. Let it go and don’t take it personally. Hearing criticism can hurt and awaken some negative feelings within us. You might want to avoid your manager after bad feedback. You may want to never hang out with your best friend after she critiqued you unexpectedly. A partner who gives you unwelcome feedback may be someone you are now contemplating breaking up with. Be careful about taking criticism too personally and allowing it to dwell in your thoughts. Don’t take criticism as a reflection of you. Try to not allow yourself to feel depressed or useless because you got some negative feedback.
7. Accept that criticism will always be part of life. Although receiving criticism can make us feel like we are alone, truthfully everybody deals with criticism. Whatever choices you make will be criticised by someone. When you follow your own path, there will always be someone out there who doesn’t agree with your life choice and has something to say about it. Dealing with criticism isn’t always easy but don’t allow critics to get you down or make you doubt yourself. You won’t always gain approval from everyone about your life, but you can be content and happy with the decisions you make about your own life.
We are all imperfect. All of us make mistakes and each of us have many learning opportunities ahead. There is value to criticism and there is also value in walking away from critics who are trying to hurt you. Regardless, keep moving forward and doing what you need to do to live the life that you want.