A feeling I’ve struggled with over my lifetime, is the feeling of negative criticism. The irony is I also craved feedback because I knew I’d grow when I received it.
As someone who is into personal development and personal growth, I needed constructive criticism from people to improve, and I’d often get frustrated when I asked for feedback from people and they’d say they had nothing to share. This left a very narrow window of input from which to learn.
The underlying issue for me was that I used to make the negative feedback mean something about me. It used to look like that if I’d receive negative feedback it would be reinforcing that there was something wrong with me. I say reinforcing because deep down I had long-standing beliefs and ideas about myself that were negative.
So I can share strategies with you for dealing with negative feedback and share some good ideas. But ultimately, the thing that helped me was working with a coach to identify these negative beliefs I’ve held on to for my whole life so I could forgive myself for these judgments, bring more love to myself and find out what was more accurate from a place of love.
Once I did that, negative feedback, which I still receive, didn’t hold the same emotional weight it once did. Sometimes there’s something to learn from negative feedback, and sometimes, I can just smile at it.
With love and appreciation,
Ankush Jain
Coach and Author of Sweet Sharing – Rediscovering the REAL You
