How to Emotionally Distance Yourself From Criticism
You will never make everyone happy – and people who are unhappy will tell you why. Criticism is part of the cost of human existence. But even though we know this, it’s hard to deal with when negativity starts to build up. Share your opinion online, or just report some inconvenient facts (ask me how I know) and you may end up with crowds of people telling you that you are a bad person. Here’s how to prevent criticism from ruining your day.
Accept it to happen
The only way to completely avoid criticism is to simply not let anyone know about your existence. Once you start opening up your face, name, letter, or actions to the world, people will have an opinion of you. No one, no matter how insanely successful he may be, enjoys universal love. Haters gonna hate.
When you think so, criticism is a sign that you are doing something right. You post your work publicly. Whenever I have one of those unpleasant memories of the time I said or did something stupid, I like to tell myself that I was brave . I may have screwed up, but at least I tried.
Pay attention to criticism
Do you care about the opinion of the person who criticizes? If they are your boss or your trusted friend, this is different from the fact that they are just some kind of random who throws themselves into a dirty tweet and did not know that you existed 30 seconds before.
Selected facts from interpretation
Even benevolent criticism has layers of human error prone between the real problem and the words or thoughts that come back to you. The other person interprets what you have done and reacts differently; you hear their words and make your own assumptions.
So, imagine that you are describing the problem to a friend in an impartial manner, using only the facts. Tara Sophia More invites you to accept a fact, such as “six publishers turned down my book offer,” and then come up with a few interpretations rather than focusing on the first one that comes to your mind.
“Everyone hates it and I suck” might be one of those interpretations, but consider others, such as “I may have sent it to the wrong publishers” or “Maybe the marketing department needs more research” or “Maybe I you need to send it to other than six people. ” Then see if you can gather information to narrow down your options.
Know that this says more about them than about you.
If someone decides to criticize you when they don’t need it, think about what this fact tells you about him. Maybe they wanted to get into a situation in order to pretend that they have power over what is happening. Maybe they have misconceptions that they are comedians and that humiliating people in public makes them look so funny and smart.
If a topic is controversial or political, any criticism you receive on the topic is probably not about you at all. For example, every time I write an article that has the word “president” in it, I get emails like this:
Your entire article was SMALL and INFORMATIONAL!
All your criminal activity is over, bitch!
and
You, sir, are a fake news commentator. Stop being a liberal LMAO crazy! If it was any other president, you would say this is such a great idea. Liberal hypocrisy at its best.
and
This college-educated white man doesn’t understand your intentions. It’s a pity indeed. I used to respect journalism. Used to. Articles like yours are like an athlete’s itch.
The three were in response to an article on how to block “presidential” emergency warnings , a system that was launched this year but was signed into law two presidents ago. Do these people care about the alert system? Or me? No, they are simply preoccupied with their identity as part of the Trump team. Sad!
Find a grain of truth
Criticism hurts the most when it hits the nerves. You already have some insecurity or lack of confidence in yourself, and some of them may be legitimate. So, if a particular comment really hurts, then it’s not the comment itself that hurts you, but how it reminds you of something that you already know about yourself.
So throw away the comment and consider if you should tackle this problem yourself. Not because you are obligated to fix a random troll or sworn enemy, but because this is something that you already care about. Do it on your own terms.