Deciding Whether to Listen to Criticism

How do we know whether someone's criticism is helpful or not? When is it in our best interest to listen to someone's criticism?

When receiving criticism always remember the following fact - sharing someone's beliefs comes at the cost of producing the same results as them.

A really common form of criticism in society is the criticism of status. If you obtain status in any area of life, be it through sports, health, finances, contribution, etc. then there will always be some form of criticism.

More often than not, this criticism will come from someone who is producing results that are not as good as yours (often resulting in lower status) or is threatened by the results you are producing.

When you receive a criticism like this you can either carry on whatever it is you are doing or you can do what those who are criticizing you say you should do. However, as was said earlier, if you do what others of lower status say you should do then you will eventually produce the same results as them.

Another way of looking at the choice you have is this: You can either carry on producing the results you do, e.g. healthy body, improving your finances, etc. or you can reduce the quality of results you are producing, e.g. eat less healthily or reduce you financial wellbeing, etc.

You can also look at this situation from the opposite perspective. Say someone who is producing better results than you gives you advice or criticizes you then again you have two choices, but the choices are flipped. You can choose to try out their advice and potentially produce better results like they are or you can ignore the criticism and continue to produce the results that you always have done.

When you look at criticism in this way it makes it much easier to choose whether to listen to it or not. When you have more experience at dealing with criticism the real question you will want to answer becomes "what is the best way to handle the situation when I decide not to listen to someone's criticism?"

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Thanks to the following for including this article in
-The Live the Power Unlimited Carnival located at Live the Power