The first time your criticized you feel bad. You get down on yourself and take that criticism personally. it drives deep into your soul and festers in your mind constantly.
Every business person or pioneer is criticized especially when they allow themselves to stand out and be noticed. It’s inevitable but still it never becomes truly easy to accept until you successful embrace it. How you manage criticism will affect the way you react to it. The one thing you need to understand is that you NEED criticism. If you are in a position to be criticized then you have elevated yourself above to norm and stood out from a crowd.
There is no time where this is most relevant than in today’s environment where Internet rules and people can hide behind aliases and alter-egos benefiting from the anonymity that the Internet provides. You only need to visit Youtube and have a read of the comments to get a thorough understanding of this. Many people are out there simply to put people down as it covers there own insecurities by giving it to others.
Yesterday I sent out a request for reviews for my new ebook and had a very interesting response from a forum member. You can see the full thread here. Usually I give people the benefit of the doubt because constructive criticism is a good thing and I want to hear what people have to say. Never ignore constructive criticism as its the best way forward no matter what field your in. On the other hand some people take things a little bit too far and when I realize someone is wanting to play a semantics, I just lose interest. The conversation moved from healthy banter through to someone simply out there to put you down, no matter what. Interestingly I did a Google search on the person involved because simply I’ve never heard of the guy yet he seemed to think he was a guru of some sort. I won’t say much more but check out my Google search here and needless to say, the results were very interesting. I won’t jump to conclusions but if these searches are anything to go by, frankly based on his conduct, I’m not surprised!
I’m not alone by any means, in fact, I’ve had it pretty good. There are some prominent examples of this all around us. People openly criticize Bill Gates yet fail to point out that he’s given many billions of dollars to charities over the years and also single-handedly turned computer software on its head. But who cares really, he’s put himself out there so why not point the finger? We criticize governments and head of states all the time, yet the same criticism is someone else’s praise. But we don’t care, we point the finger at the guy at the top. Michael Schumacher was always criticized for his racing tactics, not unlike Ayrton Senna. They dominate so lets chop ‘em down.
Why? Because we love to find faults in those people who have stuck their head up and stood tall, its human nature. However if you take a look at the people mentioned above these are all people who have excelled without peer in their respective fields. So whenever I am criticised I can’t help but smile because to attract criticism means that you have done something that is being noticed and that can’t be a bad thing. A side note, that little banter I had on the forum actually drove a whole heap of traffic to my blog and had plenty of people sign up to my newsletter. I couldn’t help but smile.
Next time your criticized for your work stand and feel good about it because everyone who has succeeded has at some point in time been exposed to strong criticism, good and bad. Your task is to embrace it and know that in theory, its one of the greatest forms of complement.
I recommend having a read of Yaro’s article about this as it’s another good insight
