BellaOnline Forums Beauty and Self Self Development 3 highly effective tips to handle criticism

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Thank you for the article, haridas.

One of the suggestions the article gives is to be open to criticism from everyone... the point they are trying to make is not to be prejudiced in taking it from a younger person or what-not. It made me wonder if the author has sometimes found their criticism not well received. But I think it far more common that people assume someone elder or an expert or male or a parent or whatever, somehow can't possibly be wrong or have a motive other than selfless advice. I think it's a more serious matter when we accept untrue criticism as true, than when we ignore good advice. What do you guys think?

Though i understand their point, it disturbed me that the article hardly made mention of abusive criticism. The author used the term, "malicious criticism" and only said you shouldn't get angry! I think this is misleading. If you are receiving malicious criticism... it's important to get it to STOP. Sometimes this means breaking off contact with that person... for criticism can sometimes be abusive and just as damaging or more than beatings.

I think we have to know how to sort out criticism.... to know when it has value and when it is just angry and when it is actually abusive and when it's not abusive but not true either. And i find for me, that's hard to do when its happening. Some things said hurt a lot and only days or weeks later can i figure out if it was abusive or not. And unfortunately, usually when something is said, no matter whether it is true or not, i hurt.

What about the rest of you? What's your experience?

One must not take abuse.

There is a problem here.

How to decide if the criticism is constructive?
Because many times I have become angry when criticized and blamed the other person. But after years I realized that they were right.

Our ego hurts when we are criticized. That causes this reaction and that is wrong.

Personally I never liked any criticism till some time back. Now a days, I listen to it and then start thinking.

Well, i would like to be able to look at why it was said and if it is true before i take it to heart. Because if the criticism is fair, i DO want to learn from it and improve myself... but if it is not true and if it's said because the other person is upset, or worse yet - if they are saying it just because they are trying to hurt me, then i don't want to have it affect me and i don't want to accept it.

So i guess the first thing i need to do is figure out how to remain calm and secure when i receive criticism and to engage my brain rather than my emotions in sorting out the truth and fairness of it. Does anyone else agree?

Holly, I definitely agree with you that we should always engage our brain rather than our emotions when we receive criticism. We can never really know what other people feel when they say certain things to us. Many times, we can take advice as criticism because of how we feel or what we are doing. It may not have anything to do with us personally, but rather be a way that somebody is showing their care and concern.

A lot of times we seem to get stuck and someone will come and try to help us out. Depending on how we feel, we might completely interpret their words as negative. So if we engage our brain and stop to think about the way the person is responding, we might actually be able to gain something positive from the comments. If we just become hurt or angry, then our emotions have interpreted what is being said as criticism, rather than useful help and we gain nothing.

Usually we can tell when a critical person is giving criticism and we should decide if their advice is one that should even be listened to or acknowledged, much less be hurt by it. If someone that you know to be very kind, gives advice that hurts, then it is best to react with our brains and not with our emotions. The criticsm being given by a friend, partner, elder or whatever is probably given as advice and should not be hurtful, if we don't let our emotions take root. As an artist, we had to learn to critique each other and I had to learn that it was "positive" information, to help me, rather than something to hurt me.

We really should not be so fragile as to think that criticism is a personal comment on US or about US, but rather as something to help us. That, of course, exludes the criticism given by someone that we know to be mean spirited, usually harsh or generally very negative. We must believe in our own value and not let other's criticism negatively affect us.

Trish

I tend to just get sad when I am criticized, not angry. I feel like they are totally right, and I get ashamed. I take it too hard, although I am getting better. I think it helps when you are in a position to give criticism (like a teacher) and you realize that if I don't mean it negatively, but constructively because I want my students to succeed, then maybe those who criticize me don't say it to be mean or think I'm stupid, they say it to help me grow.

Wow, that's a run-on. Don't care!

Sometimes even people who are very kind and usually very helpful and give great advice can occassionally criticise unconstructively, or lash out because they themselves are hurting. This can be very unexpected to receive, and i know i've sometimes said things that i regret later.

Sometimes people who criticize may be very right. We think that they may be hurting. But their criticism may be very valid. IWe deny that because we do not want to accept our follies.