Be positive: Coping with criticism - a personal perspective
I was always jealous of friends who could react to criticism by accepting
it, even adding a bit of personal self-deprecation. When someone thoughtlessly
dismisses my efforts as ‘boring’, wouldn’t it be good to respond with a comment
such as ‘I often fell asleep myself when I was writing it’? Your critic will not
have the satisfaction of watching you squirm as you re-take the moral high
ground.
It takes practice to avoid an aggressive or defensive response to
criticism. This is how the experts say you should do it:
Be Positive
If you are a ‘half empty’ personality, you start at a disadvantage. Optimists
tend to respond more positively to setbacks, which is what criticism looks like
if you are on the receiving end. If life is stressing you then we all have a
tendency to become more pessimistic. So make sure you read what your critics say
when you are feeling reasonably relaxed.
Think Positive
It is possible, with practice, to develop a sunny outlook which will allow
you to isolate the critic and their criticism and to put it all in perspective.
It is well worth the effort of developing this skill as optimists live
significantly longer and are higher achievers. But many of those who go on to
achieve greatness have a failure or two in their past. We sometimes get things
wrong and life often wrong-foots us. So learn to deal with it and then you can
cope.
Step back
Another valid technique is to stand back. It is the book, perhaps your
writing, but not you that is being criticised. So try to stand back and
adopt an outsider’s perspective on the matter. Nobody’s skin is so tough that
criticism doesn't hurt. Politicians, for example, have just developed better
coping strategies. Like good lawyers, they have learned that their game has
rules and have learned to live with them. They don’t like losing but they know
they have to move on to the next issue.
Abuse
Excessive criticism in childhood is a largely unacknowledged type of abuse
from which the majority of us suffer to some extent. Everybody has been told
off. No child escapes without being unjustly blamed for some event. We now
understand that we react in a profound neurological way that can block conscious
thinking. If you feel this hurdle is too high to leap alone then you might need
some help.
Perspective
You can also tell yourself that there is another perspective on events. This
is only one person stating their view. In the sixties there were a set of comic
guides to ‘one-upmanship’ and how to get on at work. In those innocent times
people knew their place, so most people got the joke. Now we are all locked in
mutual competition with colleagues and friends, you might be justified in
calling into question the motives of some detractors.
When does comment become criticism?
Always check to see if the criticism can fall into the category of
constructive feedback before you react. This has to be a conscious test. As with
most of the other advice, it requires you to pause before responding to give
time to assess what is being said. If the critic’s comments fail the
‘constructive’ test then you might be justified in responding to yourself that they have
missed the point and then go on to think through what you were really intending to say,
and whether you have said it clearly.
Practise critical thinking
Writing involves making a creative choice from among the millions of possible
paths and the writer can almost always see another, possibly better, way of
expressing it. So good writers should already be tough critics. As a provider of
‘criticism’ you should soon understand that you are only exploring this same
process of examining alternatives. Just accept that this is a different
perspective and perhaps explain that you did examine that possibility but chose
a different path.
What next?
Like advice on eating, driving or smoking, advice on writing is easy to give
but hard to follow. Remember the old joke about the number of psychiatrists it
takes to change a light bulb? The answer is that the light bulb has really got
to want to change. If criticism is disabling or too painful to cope with, you
will not be able to appreciate the different perspectives the criticism
provides.
A bit of anger, provoked by some criticism, can be a powerful motivator. If
you have managed to produce a book, you already qualify as somebody with a lot
of self-belief. The challenge ahead is to persuade a publisher to back you. So
polish that letter to agents and send off another batch of submissions this
week.
Charles Jones
© Charles Jones 2005
