Learn how to do anything: How to Accept Criticism

The funny thing about criticism is that, while it stings, it's actually really necessary to becoming truly good at something. If you're not very good at taking criticism, you might want to work on this skill. Not only will it help you to improve your interactions with other people, but it will also help you improve yourself and feel better when you have problems.

Steps

Handling Your Feelings

Stay calm. The first thing that you should do is stay calm. Don’t panic, don’t yell, don’t even respond. Hearing criticism is like standing in the path of a wave. You can bear down and try to fight it but that will just make things harder for you and you’re likely to get hurt. Alternatively, you can let the criticism happen peacefully. Just let the words move past you; they aren’t going to hurt. Getting worked up won’t solve anything but staying calm will make the whole experience better for you.
- Breathing slowly and focusing on your breathing can help in this situation.
Give yourself time to cool off. Before responding and even before thinking about the criticism that you received, give yourself time to cool down. Let the sting of being criticized heal. When we get emotionally involved in something, it can lead us to react harshly or make bad choices. You want your head to be as clear as possible before dealing with the problem.
- For example, take a walk through the hall or go play with your dog for a few minutes in order to regain your focus.
Separate the criticism. When accepting criticism in a way that’s healthy for you, you need to remember to compartmentalize. Don't see a single criticism as being personal or speaking against other things that you do. Don’t see the criticism as an attack on you and everything that you are. Remember that you are not every action you have ever taken. You can make mistakes and still be really good at lots of other things (or even the thing you messed up).
- For example, if someone gives you criticism about a painting you did, they don't necessarily mean that you're a bad artist overall. You can have a few flaws in a piece, or even one that failed completely, and you can still be a great artist.
- Try not to see yourself as perfect or even try to attain perfection. Perfection doesn't exist and when you try to be like that, you'll only set yourself up for failure.
Think about the skills you have that will help. When someone criticizes something you’ve done, it’s easy to feel useless, incompetent, or just generally bad. However, feeling like that doesn’t help you or anyone else. Instead, focus on building yourself while you deal with the problem. Everyone has some great skills, talents, and strengths that will help them deal with any problem. Think about what great things you can do that might help in this situation.
- For example, you might have let too many assignments go past a deadline and your teacher called you out on that. However, you're really good at organization, so if you work on getting a new system set up that allows you more time to work on assignments or helps you keep track of them, then you'll have a solution for the problem.
Be proud of yourself. If you’re proud of yourself, if you’re self confident and know that you do good work, then accepting criticism becomes much easier. When you don’t like the things you do very much, it’s easy for criticism to sting much more than it should.

Responding to the Criticism

Listen to what they have to say. When the person is giving you the criticism, at first all you want to do is listen. Don't let a million defensive statements come crashing into your head. Don't let your feathers get ruffled. Just listen. If you're too busy being defensive, you might miss out on some really good advice.
- Even is the advice or criticism is bad, it's still important to hear this person out. At least, if they're there in person. If they only send a note, you can "listen" at your own pace.
Respond when you're ready. Wait until you are calm, collected, and can give a proper response before replying, if you can. Sometimes criticism needs to be responded to immediately but sometimes you can give it time. Giving it time so that you can come up with a mature response will lead to the best outcomes.
- Say something like, "I understand what you're saying. Let me take another look at the paper and I'll see what I can do. Can I send you a message tomorrow morning to get your advice on some changes?"
Apologize for your mistakes, if needed. If the criticism came because you made a mistake or someone got hurt, it's important to immediately apologize for what happened. Apologizing is completely separate from criticism, so don't feel like apologizing obligates you to change or admit what you did was wrong.
- In most cases, all you need to say right away is something like, "I am so sorry. I didn't mean for that to happen. That wasn't what I wanted. I'm going to take another look at this and see how we can make sure that this never happens again."
Acknowledge where they're right. Once you are ready to verbally respond to their criticism, start by acknowledging what part of their criticisms are right. Hearing this will make them feel better and let them know that you really are going to think about what they said.
- Of course, they might be completely wrong. Their advice or criticism might be terrible. In this case, it's a good idea to find an aspect of what they said that's right ("I didn't handle this as well as I could have", for example) or just thank them for their feedback and leave it at that.
Talk about how you plan to change. Tell them how you plan to implement their advice or deal with the issue they criticized. This will reassure them that you're taking care of the problem. Taking criticism in this way, fully acknowledging it and responding to it, makes you come across as mature. When you address problems and take actions to fix them, people will be much more forgiving with you in the future.
- You can say something like, "Next time, I'll come to you before I talk with the client and be sure that we're agreed on the response we want to take."
Ask for their advice. If they did not already recommend a better way of going about the problem, ask them how they would do things differently. If they did already give some advice, you can still ask for more, however. Getting advice gives you a way to improve but it also makes the person who gave you advice feel better and makes them feel more generous to you.
- However, if someone really doesn't know what they're talking about, they might not be the best person to ask for advice. In this case, it may be better to get outside help from an expert.
Communicate the need for patience. Lastly, ask for their patience. Changing, especially if the changes are significant, can take time. Asking for their patience can not only take stress off of you, buying you time to address the problem, but it also can be a relief to the person who gave you advice. When you communicate that you need time to work on improvements, it tells that person that you plan on taking this seriously and getting it right the next time around.

Using the Criticism to Improve

See this as an opportunity. The healthiest way to handle criticism is to see it as a chance to step back, evaluate your actions, and find ways to improve. Criticism is a good thing and can help to bring you up to the top of your game. When you see criticism in this way, suddenly accepting it is easy. Not only will you be able to take it but you might even find yourself asking for it.
- Even if someone was wrong in the criticism they gave, it might still help you find areas where you can improve anyway. Maybe the fact that someone feels like there is a problem with what you’re doing can tell you that there is a problem, just not what that person identified.
Distinguish useful from useless advice. It is important, when implementing criticism, to understand what criticism you should listen to. Generally, if someone is just complaining without offering an idea for how you should change, they should probably be ignored. You also shouldn’t worry about criticism surrounding things you can’t change. Some people just hand out criticism so that they can make themselves feel better and you have to look out for situations like that.
- If the person hasn't given any good advice at all, then you know that they are not being constructive in their feedback. For example, saying something like "That was terrible, the colours are screwed up and the presentation is messy". Ask if they have any tips of how to improve. If they're still nasty and unhelpful, give up on them and take anything they say in the future with a grain of salt.
- Better criticism is when the negatives are accompanied by positives and the person give recommendations for improvements. For example, "I'm not keen on the amount of red, but I like the hint of blue on the mountains". They are being constructive and it is a good idea to take note of what they've said. Maybe you will heed this advice next time.
Think about and write down some takeaways. Consider the advice that you were given. Did they tell you what they thought you should do to change? Try and think of a few different approaches that achieve the same effect. This will give you options, so that you can find the best one for you. You should also think about if there’s anything else that you can learn from what they said.
- It’s actually a really good idea to write it down, word for word, right after you get the advice. This is so your memory doesn’t distort the words later and you end up following only what your hurt feelings thought the criticism was.
Make a plan. Now that you’ve decided what parts of the advice are important to you, you’ll have to make a plan for how you’re going to implement the changes that you want to make. Having a plan, especially one that you write out, will make it easier for you to follow through and make the changes. You’ll also be more likely to take action.
- Take a page from wikiHow and break down your plan into steps. What are the individual things you need to do to make this change happen? This will make the change seem less daunting.
Never give up on trying to be better. Be persistent when trying to implement criticism. Criticism often takes you in a direction completely different than what is normal for your or what you believe is the right way. This means that it will take work to improve for the next time. Expect false starts when trying to change your behaviors. This means that you might agree with what someone says, but struggle and end up falling back to what you know. Don’t feel like this means it’s impossible to change or think less of yourself for “failing”. You’re learning and if you’re determined and persistent, you’ll get there eventually.

Tips

Don't beat yourself up over negative criticism. Words such as "useless" and "ridiculous" are calculated to provoke you and if you respond, you are playing their game of criticism, rather than ignoring their deliberate rudeness. Then again, sometimes a person who keeps on criticizing in this manner does need to have it drawn to their attention that they are being neither helpful nor nice.

Warnings

Some people will send horrid comments just to be mean; just ignore their comments.

Related wikiHows

from How to of the Day http://ift.tt/1KyKEb8

Learn how to do anything

Sunday, May 10, 2015

How to Accept Criticism