How to take feedback/criticism

How do you take feedback/criticism?

I read a review recently of one of my Psycle classes & it wasn’t pretty. Now I know I probably shouldn’t have even logged on to check, but I did & it really saddened me. It actually effected my mood completely for that day. Now I do hear & appreciate the kind messages I get from riders & clients but why do we tend to focus on the negative criticism/feedback we get? How can we take value from what people say about us (if there is value in it) & let go the need to please everyone. Heres what I did to help myself:

1.) we all want to do well & search for that validating feeling that we’re doing a good job, yet some jobs are hard to gage/measure success. So be specific with where your benchmark of success is. Without this we can fall into the trap of always feeling like we’re not doing enough bc we have a moving target. I now define success differently every morning & determined a different “success criteria” in all areas of my life. Even my rest days/weekends can be “successful” by being defined as amount of time off my phone or by amount of unstructured time.

2.) our brain is wired with a negativity bias & to look for threats to our happiness/safety, so we have to pay more attention to the encouragement we get to balance out that bias. Think about actively depositing more emotional currency in the positivity bucket, for every negative criticism, name 2 positives.

3.) Learn the art of non reactivity. Listen, sit, digest, stay present & notice when your mind is going off into storytelling & come back to what’s actually being said (thank you meditation for helping me practice this!). You’re not ignoring your feelings, you’re giving yourself time (at least 24 hours) to figure out how you really feel & if you do want to say/do anything in response. Remember that you can have a feeling (sad, mad, angry, happy) & not DO anything about it, emotional processing is possible by just acknowledging fully how you feel, full stop

4.) Listen to hear, not to interpret. What hurt me the most with the criticism I got was that the person interpreted what I said the complete opposite to what I intended. And this happens all the time when we communicate with people, there’s what’s said & what they heard. Notice when we’re adding colour to someone’s words.

5.) When we become more focused & passionate about our craft we are inevitably going to be able to offer more to those who want it/are open to it & that means being ok not serving those who aren’t into us. We can’t be everything to everyone & we’d be doing ourselves a huge disservice if we did. *this is the trickiest one for me but being ok not being liked by everyone means I can put more energy into the people who do like me & what I bring to the table

6.) A final optional choice is to hear the feedback & to choose to take on any amount of what the person is saying. Notice your defensiveness & consider for a sec whether there’s anything in the feedback that you could use for your development. By removing the emotional brain temporarily I can see that I could be more specific in my motivation tactics in class

Any other people pleasers out there who would use the above to help? Comment with which one resonates with you the most or any other tactics you find helpful!