How to Handle Criticism Without Affecting Your Confidence
5 Effective Ways to Deal with a Personal Attack or Unwarranted Negative Comments
Anyone can have a platform today and share their opinions about anything, which is why your ability to handle criticism will ensure you protect your confidence and self-esteem.
Criticism can be useful if it’s intended to help a person improve, and progress personally and professionally. How it’s given will determine whether it’s helpful or if it’s unwarranted.
1-Minute Summary Video
What is Criticism?
To criticise means to give an opinion to someone based on an unmet need or expectation. A person cannot criticise someone unless there is a difference of opinion, values, standards or expectations.
It’s a way people communicate their differences or disagreements. If someone does not have an intention to serve the person they communicate with, criticism has a heavy negative energy.
It can come across as judgment, arrogance, and a sense of righteousness.
Types of Criticism
Criticism can be:
- Constructive, which means it’s given with an intention to help a person improve.
- Negative or hurtful, which means it’s focused on only the mistakes a person has made.
- Unfair or untrue, which means a person’s point of view cannot be validated or justified.
- Destructive, which means it’s disrespectful and intended to bring down a person by attacking their reputation or who they are.
Difference Between Criticism and Feedback
Criticism isn’t effective if it does not have a positive intent. For example, if a sports coach criticises a player for mistakes they’ve made without suggesting what they can do instead, that form of communication isn’t useful.
For criticism to have a positive intent, it has to align with what motivates a person and can cause them to take new actions.
Feedback is a tool to assess what a person is doing well and how they can improve. It does not focus on only what a person isn’t doing well.
Feedback can help shorten a person’s learning curve and accelerate their progress to the outcomes they want.
What Not to Do When Facing Criticism
Facing criticism can often trigger a person. The key is being able to manage your emotions well when receiving it.
Things to avoid when facing criticism include:
- Do not make excuses or avoid what a person has communicated.
- Do not justify yourself or your actions.
- Do not blame others.
- Do not attack or get into an argument with the person to prove them wrong.
- Do not make the issue bigger than it is.
5 Effective Ways to Handle Criticism Without Affecting Your Confidence
Here are five ways to handle criticism, so you can protect your confidence and shift your focus to how you can improve to get to your outcomes.
- Assess the source of the criticism and their intention. Not all criticism is correct, which is a reason to know where it’s coming from and the intention behind it. Also, not all criticism is incorrect, which means you can take it on board and use it to improve.
- Acknowledge someone attempted to communicate something to you. When someone criticises you, they are communicating with you. While it may not be what you want to hear, appreciating that someone shared something will allow you to be more receptive to receiving feedback.
- Gauge whether the criticism has merit or is valid. If you know something communicated isn’t justified, it’s important to not let that get you down. Being able to manage your emotions will ensure you respond well.
- Focus on what you did well more than what you didn’t do well. It’s easy to focus on the one thing you did wrong instead of all the other things you did right. Whatever you focus on will expand, which means you will improve if you continue to give attention to things you are doing well.
- Identify the next actions you can take. If you have a growth mindset, you will use what’s been communicated to help you improve. This will require you to create an action plan. If you don’t apply what useful, you won’t improve.
Final Thoughts
Your ability to learn how to handle criticism will ensure you protect your confidence and get closer to your goals. You will make mistakes and other people may not agree with what you do or how you do them.
It’s your responsibility to filter what’s not helpful and use what’s valuable to improve, so you can generate the emotions you want and live how you want to.
Action Step: Next time you face criticism, give yourself time to assess it before responding. If it’s not valid, you can ignore it or thank the person for their opinion. If you know it’s helpful, use it to gain more self-awareness and take action on it.
Question: What other ways can you handle criticism without affecting your confidence?
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