Tip: Listen for what you can learn. Be careful what you choose to believe.
Dr. Alan Zimmerman’s Comment:
You can receive a dozen compliments and one criticism.
Later that evening, which one are you still thinking about?
Too often, we give the most discouraging voice the most attention. And before long, someone else’s opinion starts sounding like a fact about who we are.
“You’re too sensitive.”
“You’re not leadership material.”
“At your age, why bother?”
A comment can take five seconds to deliver and occupy your thinking for five years. But you don’t have to keep giving it that much room.
I had to learn that myself.
Early in my years of writing these Tuesday Tips, one reader sent me several long, highly critical emails. I sat down to answer one of them as kindly and professionally as I could.
For more than an hour, I wrote and rewrote my response. And I still wasn’t satisfied.
Then something hit me: I had never spent an entire hour writing a letter to my parents.
These were two of the most important people in my life. They sacrificed to give me a solid education, upright values, and a chance to be more successful than they were. They didn’t go to fancy restaurants or buy new cars. They put my needs ahead of their wants.
Yet here I was, giving a habitual critic more attention than I had given to thanking my parents.
That didn’t make much sense.
I threw away the letter and went on to something more worthwhile.
Perhaps you’ve done something similar. You’ve spent an evening defending yourself in your head while someone who loves you was sitting in the next room.
Here are four ways to give criticism its proper place.
1. Separate useful feedback from a personal label.
“You interrupted me twice during the meeting” gives you something specific to examine and change.
“You’re impossible to work with” gives you a label.
Before you accept someone’s criticism, ask yourself:
“Does this comment identify something I can improve—or does it simply put me down?”
Sometimes you need to ask a follow-up question: “Can you give me an example?”
There may be useful feedback behind a poorly worded comment. Listen for it. You can correct a behavior without condemning yourself as a person.
Perhaps you handled a conversation poorly. You may need to apologize and handle the next conversation differently. That doesn’t mean you’re a failure.
2. Spend more time with people who help you grow.
Think about the people you turn to when you’re discouraged. Who helps you see the situation more clearly? Who reminds you of your abilities while being honest about what you need to improve?
Make time for those people.
The people who believe in you won’t necessarily agree with everything you say. They care enough to tell you the truth and help you do something useful with it.
You may not be able to choose every coworker or relative. But you can choose whose advice you seek and whom you call for encouragement.
This is one reason I created NEXT-LEVEL YOU.
Reading your Tuesday Tip is a good habit. You’re feeding your mind useful ideas and taking time to think about how you live and work. Keep doing that.
But knowing what to do and actually doing it are two different things.
You can read about positive self-talk in the morning and spend the afternoon putting yourself down. The benefit comes when you catch yourself and practice a different response.
Inside NEXT-LEVEL YOU, we use live sessions, replays, worksheets, and member conversations to help you apply what you’re learning. Our focus is on helping you practice something different so you see real changes in your life.
One of our members, Jenny, described a change she was noticing:
“I’m becoming less explosive and becoming more aware of my responses.”
That’s the kind of progress that matters when a conversation gets difficult.
Try NEXT-LEVEL YOU free for 7 days. Start with one situation you’d like to handle better. Join a live session or watch a replay, then use a worksheet to put an idea into practice. Every session stands on its own, so there’s no catching up to do.
Need help signing up? Email me, and I’ll help you get started.
3. Give criticism a reasonable amount of your time.
Some feedback deserves a careful conversation. An ongoing work problem may need to be addressed. A damaged relationship may need an apology.
But repeatedly defending yourself to someone who keeps attacking your character can consume hours without improving anything.
Before writing another lengthy reply, ask, “What useful outcome am I trying to achieve?”
If you need clarification, ask for it. If you owe an apology, give it. If you have already answered fairly and there is nothing more to resolve, you can stop responding.
I wish I had asked myself that question before spending an hour rewriting that email.
Who deserves some of the time you’ve been giving your critic?
4. Build confidence with evidence and action.
When you catch yourself saying, “I never do anything right,” stop and check the facts.
Maybe you kept a difficult promise, helped a customer, or worked through a problem you didn’t know how to solve at first.
Write it down so one discouraging comment doesn’t erase what you know you’ve done well.
Then take one useful step before you feel completely confident. If you’ve been holding back an idea at work, prepare your thoughts and offer it at the next meeting. If you handled a conversation badly, go back and try again.
You give yourself another reason to believe in your abilities every time you follow through.
Action for this week
Choose one critical comment you keep replaying.
Ask: “Is there something useful here that I can act on?”
If there is, write down one thing you will do differently in your next conversation. If it is simply a hurtful label, remind yourself: “That is someone’s opinion. I don’t have to accept it as a fact about me.”
This week, also thank someone who has helped you believe in yourself.
Give the people who build you up some of the attention you’ve been giving the person who put you down.