Many people fear criticisms or worse are scared of giving one. Don't fall into that trap.
When used well or accepted in good faith and with a learning attitude, criticism could be a powerful tool that you can leverage to grow and become even more successful.
How?
Continue reading to find out.
What is Criticism?
A relevant definition found in the Oxford Dictionary is that:
Criticism is the analysis and judgment of the merits and faults of a literary or artistic work
It's litrarily negative feedback from your readers, supervisors, partners, friends, family members, neighbors, etc.
That the work you have spent so much time and effort to produce lacks some merit, is just not good enough, or is faulty in some way or another.
But you don't have to cringe at criticisms or feel bad, demotivated, or angry, even if the giver meant it to produce those negative feelings.
In fact, I am of the opinion that you should actively seek, encourage, and expect criticisms at all times because it's a good thing.
What is Good About Criticism?
Criticisms are (negative) feedback from people who consume your work.
And just like every feedbacks, its value depends on what you do with it.
There're several reasons why criticism is a good thing, regardless of who's giving it.
Whether they have your best interest at heart or not.
Whether they're criticizing you out of love and a desire to see you do better or to belittle, demean, demotivate, or make you angry.
Regardless of what their intentions are:
Criticisms help you identify which area of your work you can work on to be better.
Criticisms help you understand if you're reaching your target audience or not
Criticisms help you discover new perspectives on the subject matter
Criticisms help you determine how well your audience understands what you're saying and if you need to work on improving your communication medium, format, etc.
Criticisms help you to understand your audience better
It's unreasonable to believe that your work is in any way perfect.
And because it's hard to see your own shortcomings you need feedback from your audience to be able to evaluate which aspect of your work can be improved upon or entirely removed to make it better.
Savvy companies and organizations are paying people to review and provide feedback (good or bad) on their product but you are getting it free from your audience.
People are also being paid to proofread, edit, and fact-check others' content but you have an audience who points out your every spelling and grammatical error, calls you out for wrong or unverified facts, and questions the logic of your reasoning and opinion, etc., all for free.
Bet grateful to your critics!
They're actually doing you a favor.
How to Use Criticism to Become Better
Do you analyze what your critics say, to understand their perspectives or do you take it as a personal attack?
When you take criticism as a personal attacks, you close yourself to possible new knowledge and perspective that might be better than your original views and deny yourself opportunities to grow.
One of the best and fastest ways to grow is to actually listen to your critics.
Try as much as possible to understand their views, evaluate new facts, etc.
Are there any confusions, misunderstanding, misinformation that you need to clear up?
Go ahead and do just that, clear it up.
But in some cases, you may not come to a point of understanding with your critics, and that's perfectly ok.
No one says you will always agree with your critics but you should be able to walk away from the discussion, argument, debate (whatever it is) knowing what your differences are, why those differences exist, and what your current position on the subject matter is.
Conclusion
The problem is that some people feel when you don't agree with someone on a particular thing, you automatically become enemies and they feel awkward after the discussion.
That's a shame.
Do you think you can actually be in agreement with the majority of people, especially on a controversial topic or things that are based mostly on personal bias, perspective, and opinions?
For example, it's very easy to agree with someone what color is blue and which is red but try tell them which color is the best and you may spend the whole day arguing it out.
But does it mean either of you is wrong?
No!
You simply have different opinions and preferences, which is perfectly fine.
So from today, even right now, begin to both accept and give more criticisms and evaluate their merits to see how you can improve on your work and also help others grow too.
Start by constructively criticizing this post. Point out my spelling, grammatical, and logical errors. Because I am very certain this is not in any way flawless.
Do you appreciate, welcome, and give criticisms? Share with us in the comments section below.
I learned that the one sharp way to know whether you are being too hard on yourself is to ask you are a good friend someone who cares enough to be honest with you and not tells you what you want to hear.