Practicing courage when others criticize

As far as I can tell, people are going to deliver their assessments of your behavior. There’s no amount of hustling for worthiness that’s going to save you from someone’s criticisms or gossip. There’s no amount of trying to “do it right for them” that will spare you their stuff.

And really, it is their stuff.

When people genuinely want to offer helpful feedback, they’ll throw the ball so that you can catch it. They won’t criticize or drag you or try to get everyone on board to cancel you. Someone interested in genuinely offering critique will literally try to offer a perspective in a way that you might consider adopting it as your own, because they are solution-seeking. They will engage in a process of discussion with you, one that is as respectful as they themselves would want to be spoken to.

When people outright criticize, you have a few options:

1.) You can hustle harder to try to smooth things over, make them happy, phrase it in the right way, convince them that you’re awesome. This will be effective approximately 50% of the time, but the other 50% it won’t and they will be mad at you anyway, even if you swear you’ll be different or better. Be prepared to shape-shift like a mad woman depending on who you’re talking with, if you pick this option.

2.) You can limit contact with the person so as not to be around any criticisms. Pro of this approach: you avoid this person and thus avoid dealing with them. Con of this approach: someone else will pop up with a criticism at some point in your life, and you never actually learned how to practice courage when others criticize, which means you’re back at square one.

3.) You can decide to know yourself, love yourself, and allow yourself a process for parsing through the criticisms. With this option, you’ll be connected to this prioritization of loving yourself and allowing yourself to have a process. This process that you allow yourself, from a place of love, will not be about shaming or criticizing yourself into change, nor will it be about totally avoiding whatever criticisms someone has brought to you. This process will be slower, and kinder. This process will be grounded in looking at the pieces, aligning yourself with your integrity, and deciding the best way to respond—which could be to actually respond to your critics, or could be no response at all.

Let it be said: I really like door #3.

Door #3 is the journey of really understanding who you are–not just the shortcomings that you have just like everyone else, but also all of the wonderful and unique things that there are to celebrate.

Door #3 is the path of finding out that there’s more goodness there than you were aware of, once you actually look closely.

Door #3 is the path of deciding whose opinion you want to matter, and whose you don’t–and assigning a hierarchy, even, of putting your opinion first and then those of the people with a demonstrable record of care.

Door #3 allows you to have a process. If someone is criticizing with the hopes of changing your behavior, don’t you need to go through some kind of a process in order to arrive there, honestly? You can’t just offer boilerplate concessions if you choose Door #3. You have to actually look at what they are saying and see if it aligns with who you actually are or want to be.

Always choose door #3. Your energy can go into shape-shifting, and it can go into avoidance…or it can go into richly and divinely becoming absolutely everything that you already are, and loving this you, wholly and totally.

The energy will go somewhere. Where do you want yours to go?