We live in an extremely critical world. All around us we see, hear, feel, and are provided with critical feedback about ourselves, our world, and everyone and everything in it. Watch the news, a commercial or two, TV shows, movies, read reviews online, comments, twitter, etc. All of it is full of critical expression.
Criticism can be a useful tool for learning. Citing disapproval of someone or something can inspire that person to learn, grow and change. Judging the merits and faults of ideas, opinions, people and things is a way for all of us to learn to form our own ideas and opinions. Here is the thing about criticism though, it is not facts. By definition it is strictly one person’s perspective, analysis, or judgment. It is opinion, not fact. The problem with the way people express criticism is that they often express it as though it IS factual information. If I say, “Your shoes are ugly.” I might take myself so seriously that I actually believe that because I think that they are ugly, that makes them ugly. I would be incorrect in that assumption though. You bought the shoes, and so you probably do not think they are ugly, and that opinion is just as valuable as mine.
That is true for all critical expressions. They are NOT facts. They are opinions. Regardless of how many aspects of proof someone tries to give you that their opinions related to the value, merits, goodness or badness of anything are the one true fact, they are not. I can say that your shoes are blue. We might even agree that they are blue, and that might be a fact, if indeed they are blue, or a shade of blue. What is not fact is how I think of your shoe’s value. Whether I think they are pretty or ugly, comfortable or painful, useful or impractical, none of those can be a fact. They are all just opinions based on my own perspective. Even if a thousand people agree that the shoes are ugly, that is still just a thousand opinions, not facts.
The reason I mention this is, as I mentioned at the beginning, we live in a very critical world, and also in a world that sometimes loses sight of the fact that criticism is not fact. It is opinion. Opinions are not true or false. They just are what they are. That means that any opinion can be just as true or false as any other opinion depending on the audience listening to it. If you already hate something or someone, and someone shares an opinion of how awful something is, you will likely agree, and also think that the information is true. If you like someone or something, and someone says how awful something is, you are more likely to question whether that is true. Interesting, right?
When someone criticizes you, do you believe it to be true? When you hear that someone is talking about you behind your back, do you believe that is true? When you read comments on your posts, pictures, comments, etc., do you believe those to be true? Here is the good and bad news, none of it is truth. All of that is opinion. The upside is that only you can decide if a criticism is true for you, and then you get to decide if you want to do anything about it.
Someone tells me that I am arrogant. They cite evidence of said arrogance by telling me all of the arrogant things I have said and done for the past decade. Even still, this is not factual information. It is opinion. It is not proof that I am arrogant. It is only proof that this one person thinks I am arrogant. If I use that information to start changing who I am, using it to feel badly about who I am, use it to form my opinions about myself, that could be problematic. After all, it is only one person who thinks that way.
What if other people perceive that I am confident, capable and intelligent? What if other people think that makes me a great leader? If I were to be different to accommodate the person that thinks I am arrogant, I would not only not be being true to myself, I would also possibly let down the people who trust me to be a confident leader. By the way, I have known many confident leaders, and all of them have been criticized as being arrogant. Still doesn’t make it true. Even if I agree that I am arrogant, which at times I might, that doesn’t make it a true statement of who I am. It is how I act sometimes, and that is the most true any judgement or criticism is. Might be true sometimes.
Has anyone ever been critical of the way you acted, spoke, looked, thought? Did you take that information and use it to beat yourself up? That is the problem with criticism. People think it is truth, and then use it to abuse other people or themselves. We are truly complex beings. Ever heard of the Yin and the Yang, well we all have both. Those sides of us are in constant fluid motion flowing to the Yin, then flowing to the Yang continuously. I am as arrogant as I am humble. I am as confident as I am insecure. All of those are just opinions about how I am expressing myself in any one moment. Whether those opinions are my own or someone else’s does not matter. They are opinions, not facts.
I went through a time where I refused to listen to or accept any criticisms. Because they are opinions and not truths, why should I listen to or accept them? Remember that arrogance that I was accused of, well, that was a time when I heard that one a lot. While it was not “true” that I was arrogant, it was true that I was not open to listening or growing. I realized, after a time, that was not who I wanted to be, a closed person who did not grow or change. I started listening again. It was different this time though.
When I initially heard criticism, I was small, I took it to be the truth. Unfortunately the people sharing their opinions about who I was as a person were not nice about it. I do not know if they actually believed all of the horrible things they said about me to me and to others, but I now know they were not true. It was actually an abusive situation. As my life went on, I continued to believe all of the negative things people said. I also made up some of my own based on past criticism. I saw movies and TV, and piled on the harshness about who I was, and more often, who I was not in the eyes of the world. I ended up in a really bad place believing in all of that as truth.
Eventually I realized that only I could determine who I was and decided “screw what other people thought.” If I had not done this I probably would be literally dead. I had reached such a state of depression and anxiety that I was barely functioning and wanted to be dead every minute of every day. I felt so bad about my value as a person that I was absolutely sure that the world and myself would be better off if I was dead. Only basically saying a big FU to the world and being my own person saved my life. I got really selfish and focused on figuring out what and who I thought I was. I have many people to thank for coming to that realization, not for the selfishness, but for the courage to begin to reject the criticalness of the world as being realness.
This is a work in progress as of this moment, but I have learned a lot. I learned that criticism is not about me. It is about the other person. If someone thinks a critical thought about me, it says more about who they are, and what their thoughts and ideas are, than about who I am. I also learned that is my truth too. If I am critical of someone else, it is more about me than them. This was freedom for me! I could finally hear other people’s thoughts and opinions without it crushing me into little pieces. Yes, I do still get defensive from time to time, but overall, I can take it for what it is worth. It is information about one person’s experience of me. I can accept that it is their truth. I can even apologize for creating that truth by acting in a certain way. Even if I didn’t do it on purpose, and even if I do not agree that it had anything to do with me.
Here is what I try to do. It sometimes takes me seconds to do, and sometimes days, but never more than that. It took me years to get to this timeline, but I did it, and so can you. When someone is critical of something I say, do, create, am etc., I listen. I open up the window and allow the information to flow over me like a breeze. I examine it. I see where it might be true, and where it might not be true. I thank them for the information, sometimes just in my own head, not out loud. I am not always brave enough to say thank you out loud. Then I use it. I use it to decide if I want to do anything differently the next time a similar situation arises. I may use it to decide not to change. I might use it to change. I might just hold it in the back of my mind for the future. Whatever I do with it, I do not let it crush my spirit. I am sure of myself, confident in who I am, and unwavering in my understanding of my fundamental value as a human being. No amount of criticism can shake that for long. It is not arrogance. I am not better than you. I am just the best me I can be, and I have value as me.
Part of that confidence in myself is also their for others. I am just as confident in your ability to be the best you that you can be. We are all of equal value. When I am critical of something you do, it is my experience of you, and I own that. I know it is not you for real. It is how I see you. You get to do with that whatever you want. I hope that you use it in some way to be the best at being you, even if that means you discard the information entirely. I never mean to be arrogant or judgmental, thought I know people do experience me that way from time to time. I do try around some people to tone myself down so that they can hear me easier, and I do also fail at that. I work hard on it though.
For you, consider this, critical remarks about you are not the truth. It is entirely up to you whether you believe them or not. You get to decide what to do with them, if anything. You get to use them to build yourself up or tear you down. I hope that you do the former rather than the later, and you still get to choose it. I know you will make the decision you are meant to make in the moment. I was meant to take things personally. I was meant to reject everything as bulls*@#t, and believe none of it. I am also meant to listen and be grateful when people share information with me. It is all part of my journey in this life, as it is also yours. Where are you in your critical journey? Leave a comment and share with us!
-Namaste