How to accept negative feedback?

Everyone is saying: you should know how to accept constructive criticism. But how do you accept it when even if it is constructive, it scratches like a tag on a brand-new t-shirt? And everything seems to be to the point – even you can admit this, somewhere deep inside (very deep, of course). And yet, you still want to turn on passive aggression like “Come on!” or “I didn’t expect anything else from you!”

In reality, constructive feedback is very useful, even if it contains not only odes about how brilliant we are, but also references to what could have been done better.

Let’s begin with the cases where critique is especially difficult to bear. To learn to accept it appropriately, without feeling hurt, you must seriously consider the underlying reasons.

If you have these tendencies:

• Narcissism (“You can’t criticize me – I am perfect”)
• Perfectionism (“Everything I do is perfect”)
• Low self-esteem (“If someone criticizes me that means I am good for nothing”)
• Hypersensitivity (“Someone criticizes me, I can’t deal with it, it hurts too much”)
• Strong internal critic (“I always criticize myself, and here you go – I got a confirmation!”)
• Past psychological trauma (bullying at school, a humiliation in the family)

…then you will not be able to just start calmly accepting negative feedback – it will not work for you. But you can deal with any of the listed above tendencies, and it is best to do with the help of a specialist.

But what if I am not a perfectionist, and I don’t have deep psychological traumas, and I don’t fall apart from every “wrong” glance in my direction, but negative feedback still hurts me too much?

1. Do not show externally your first reaction that is usually quite impulsive.

Count to 10, smile a little bit while counting, scan your body – is there tension anywhere? Relax. Critique is not an attack (if it is constructive) and you don’t need to be defensive.

2. Separate yourself from what is being criticized.

We often take negative feedback too personally, as if we are being criticized. And this is why it hurts so much. For example, when someone criticizes the song you wrote it means only that perhaps something is wrong with the song, but not with you! It doesn’t say anything about you as a composer and certainly – as a person.

3. Analyze whether you need to consider this criticism at all?

To do that, turn on a filter composed of these questions:

• Do I trust this person’s opinion? Why?
• Does their opinion matter to me? Why?
• Do they talk about something that I can control or not?
  

4. And the most important thing: any criticism is just someone’s personal opinion. It doesn’t mean much. If we fall apart whenever someone says something negative about us – soon there will be nothing left of us. Therefore, the best approach is to take from the critical feedback things that really matter to you and throw away everything else. And keep moving forward.

We believe in you!