Eric Maisel on meaning and criticism
In a series of podcasts called Handling Toxic Criticism, Eric Maisel addresses, as he says, “the terrible toll that criticism takes, how it interferes with your ability to live your life purpose, and what you can do to reduce the effects of criticism in your life.” Here is an excerpt:
Once you have a sense of your meaning-making path, you can begin to decide what sorts of criticisms are going to count and what sorts of criticisms you are going to ignore out of hand.
If you decide that your meaning-making path is writing, you can then shrug off criticism of your singing voice and your snoring as minor and only worth considering insofar as you don’t want to bring down your choir or keep up your lover.
That is, you process criticism of this irrelevant sort to see what it means and what it implies, but you do so without any emotional charge attached because it does not connect to your meaning-making path.
Continued in article The Existential Key, by Eric Maisel, PhD.
Image: American Idol judge Simon Cowell, “notorious for his unsparingly blunt and often controversial criticisms, insults, and wisecracks about contestants and their singing abilities, or lack thereof.” [Wikipedia]
April 19th, 2008 at 10:26 am
I love how you used a picture of Simon in an article about toxic criticism (that was priceless).
In any event, the article is correct. We must learn which criticisms we can learn from and which ones we must learn to ignore.
We all have received countless criticisms since the moment we were born. As adults, we must learn to rise above these criticisms. I know personally that if I listened to everyone who ever criticized me, I wouldn’t be nearly as happy or successful today as I am fortunate enough to be.
In closing, when it comes to criticisms, I always tell people:
Believe in yourself. Believe in your abilities, your talents and your ideas.
Stanley F. Bronstein
MrAchievement
Attorney, CPA, Author & Professional Motivational Speaker