Stop Taking Criticism Personally
Imagine that someone criticizes you. Then imagine yourself feeling joyful about this wonderful opportunity to learn something positive from the criticism. Imagine that you love to hear feedback about what you have said and done or didn’t say and do. Positive feedback means that you are on track. Critical feedback means that you can now improve and develop yourself.
Imagine that your self-talk sounds like, “I appreciate and am grateful for this wonderful opportunity to become better. I am grateful to this person for telling me something that will be beneficial for me.”
If you actually respond to criticism this way, congratulations!
If you are like most people, however, you don’t think of critical feedback as one of your greatest pleasures in life. But if you have the inner strength, courage, and honesty to be open to hearing criticism, you will grow more in life.
So what can you say to yourself if you have not yet mastered the ability to love criticism?
One possibility is: “My goal is to constantly grow and develop myself. I love positive feedback. But I can grow from critical feedback. So I will increase my inner strength, courage, and honesty to be open to hear what people say, and to weigh what they say objectively.“
You don’t have to feel bad about yourself because someone gave you critical feedback. Your value as a person is inherent, because you are a child of the Creator and are created in His image. You have many positive qualities and have done many positive things. Your value and worth are infinite. Integrating this attitude will ensure that your sense of self-worth will remain consistently high.
Each human being is unique and one of a kind. We each have a unique purpose in life. We each have our own unique ability to connect with our Creator. We each have our own strengths and weaknesses, virtues and faults. We are not meant to be an exact clone of anyone else.
Therefore, life isn’t a competitive game. We each are meant to serve the Creator with our unique character, temperament, and personality based on our unique life situations and circumstances in the past and present.
