The art of criticism

It's a Sunday...time for some serious stuff.

Nowadays everyone is a born critic. Even my 3 daughters wants to have their say. Everything and everyone, equally is prone to criticism from time to time. Whether its constructive or not, how you react to it is more important and telling of your character than the criticism itself. Do take a moment to digest and comprehend what you are hearing or reading before jumping to conclusions or you could make a critical mistake in interpretation. The key here is to accept criticism with grace and humility.

 

Part of being human is the giving and taking of feedback. Every one needs feedback even leaders. If you criticise expect to be criticised. If you constantly take criticism, disagreements and even lighthearted innocent jokes as personal malicious attacks eventually you won't even be able to communicate with your cat, let alone your other half without suffering a nervous breakdown or bursting in to tears. This is especially vital within any organisation be it in your family or work place or even a social network like FaceBook.

When someone gives his opinion, comment or remark about an issue, allowing yourself to let fly in their general direction is not going to look well for you. Accepting criticism gracefully means exercising full control of your temper. It means not lashing out and attacking the person giving you feedback or criticism. If you display irrational and unreceptive behavior to people and throw tantrums over minor issues, you may get noticed in the wrong negative way. Be able to separate emotions from issues. Displaying anger or irritability demonstrates a lack of maturity that will hold you back
 
Patience is a virtue for a reason. It gives your blood a chance to stop boiling, and your brain time to understand the real meaning of the message received. Honesty and the ability to self evaluate your own behaviour, character and performance are so critical in accepting criticism gracefully. Be receptive not reactive, put yourself in their shoes, ask questions for clarification. Display your willingness to understand and to be understood.
Every single human being makes mistakes. It's what you do with those mistakes that counts. We need to learn from them and to make changes or we'll get stuck on a blaming game...blaming everyone else for everything that goes wrong. Mistakes exist as teaching tools...learn from them. You only make mistakes if you don't learn from them.The moment you stop learning, you're dead.

Be cool, stop and smell the flowers and learn to smile when criticised. Take it with a bit of salt or maybe even with a slice of lemon...There's always tomorrow.

Feel free to comment...